Sorry, everyone: no Cold Start via Jason this morning. Torch is likely still asleep in California, eyes flitting back and forth beneath their lids as his dreams conjure motherflapping who knows what. Or, he may be tucking into a continental breakfast. Who knows. What I do know is that any imitation I might attempt of Jason’s signature CS style could only fall flat, so I will instead use this time and space to wax rhapsodic over a car I hold near and dear to my heart: the AL25 Toyota Tercel wagon.
As is so often the case with such things, I am convinced the affection I have for the Tercel Wagon is earned entirely by the merits of the car itself, but I cannot discount that I may merely be nostalgic for the era that I was a passenger in one and later counted it among the first cars I drove on the regular. But I can tell you for certain that my goodwill for this good wagon is not entirely nostalgia, nor is it even 50 percent; I think even 20 percent would be charitable.
I recall vividly the day the car came home, and how I felt it was properly modern. All crisp lines and black bumpers, the Tercel was everything the car it replaced was not. No chrome girders hanging off the ends, nary a curve or rounded panel in sight, and bright silver paint where the outgoing American wagon wore woodgrain over a color that could have been listed in the brochure as Well-Circulated Penny.
I recall our Tercel being a ringer for the one in the Bring a Trailer listing shown above, minus the wonderful plaid seats and inclinometers (more on those in a minute). For those of you too young to remember the early-80s car scene, jutting flat-topped bumpers proudly wrapped in black rubber were quite the rage, and brightwork was shrunk to thin accent strips if there at all. Entire windows framed in chrome were definitely out, as were chromed side mirrors. Leave those things in the 1970s, man. I thought, and still think, the white-painted steelies give the wagon a bit of a rugged vibe, and the center caps really pull the look together as a premium-appearing package as opposed to the cheap base offerings they were.
No discussion of the Tercel wagon is complete without mention of the rear hatch’s license plate surround, which resembled an automatic teller machine. ATMs themselves were still relatively novel at the time as I recall, so Toyota was really tapping the zeitgeist there.
Moving inside the Tercel, I thought the dash’s straight lines, crisp corners, and block-hubbed steering wheel were quite futuristic – especially with those chunky switches embedded in the instrument cluster’s bezel. Sadly, Dad did not opt for the optional inclinometers seen farther below. He no doubt thought they were neat but also ridiculous, as our Tercel would never see anything steeper than whatever qualified as Seekonk, Massachusetts’ biggest hill. In hindsight, not spec’ing the inclinometers likely forestalled all manner of teenage-driver shenangans, as 16-year-old me would absolutely have attempted to see just how much incline the Tercel could ometer.
Our Tercel wagon was a loyal commuter, family hauler, and car-I-was-allowed-to-drive until it met its demise when a guy ran a red light in his brand-new Panther-platform Mercury Cougar and totalled the little Toyota with a shot square in the left front wheel. I was in the driver’s seat for that, my first car accident. Needless to say, it sucked, and I was very sad to see the Tercel wagon go to the scrapper. The entire family was. Womp-womp.
And there ends my Tercel wagon story.
Shout-out to all the hipsters who discovered my favorite Toyota as Jesse Pinkman’s ride in Breaking Bad.
Fingers crossed, Jason returns to Cold Start tomorrow!
The Tercel was previewed as a “concept car” called the RV-5, on which the bonkers rear side windows could open upwards, gullwing style. I remember it being especially designed for bird watching, with tripod mounts etc.
These were about as dependable and useful a vehicle as you could buy at the time, and very thrifty on gas as well. Too bad we can’t go back in time and import a few nice new ones to the current year.
In what was most likely my biggest automotive mistake I sold my 1987 Tercel SR5 4WD that I bought back in 2008.
I bought it from the second owner for $450, it had almost 200k miles on it and was immaculate except for the mouse nests and turds. It has lived on a farm and the mice built their nests under the back seat and in the heater fan. So while the AC worked if you turned it on you would get the delightful aroma of mouse shit and chunks of straw blasting out of the vents.
After I stopped driving it we used it as the spare car for the extended family or left it sitting at my parents house where they had a regular procession of people stopping to ask if they were selling the Tercel. It wasn’t until after we sold it to my idiot brother-inlaw for $950 that I found out just how much I could’ve gotten for it from somebody that actually would have taken care of it.
But that was the absolute slowest car that I would ever drive.
I’m a bit freaked by the amount of attention you are giving to my favourite car that went under the radar for years. You are all welcome to come join us on Tercel4wd.com or search for the Facebook private group.
TFL reviews the Tercel 4wd
Tercel 4wd Wagon concept Tokyo motor show ‘birdwatching’ version.
I had one for a while and it was one of the best cars I ever owned.
Anecdote: When I was a kid in Sweden, Toyota had a computer at the Malmö motorshow which would ask you questions about your lifestyle and needs and give you a computerized recommendation – my dad, who had a rwd Opel Ascona at the time, was told to get a Tercel 4WD and for some reason he was deeply insulted. I, being a kid, shared his ire at having been recommended such a derpy vehicle, but now I realize that it was perfect for a man of limited budget with two (three? not sure about the year) children who spent every summer camping across Europe and who got stuck on dirt roads in the Swedish wilderness several times while out foraging or climbing things.