{"id":36637,"date":"2022-11-22T12:03:48","date_gmt":"2022-11-22T17:03:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=36637"},"modified":"2022-11-22T12:03:48","modified_gmt":"2022-11-22T17:03:48","slug":"junkyard-gem-360k-mile-1996-toyota-tercel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=36637","title":{"rendered":"Junkyard Gem: 1996 Toyota Tercel with 360,459 Miles"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the highest believable odometer reading I’ve ever seen on a discarded car during my junkyard travels<\/a> was a 1990 Volvo 240 with 626,476 miles<\/a>, I spot so many junked Toyotas with better than 300,000 miles<\/a> that I don’t consider them very noteworthy. However, nearly all of those soon-to-be-crushed 300K-plus Toyotas<\/a> are Camrys<\/a> and Previas<\/a>, with the occasional Corolla thrown in for variety<\/a>. And, of course, owners of the beloved 1983-1988 Tercel 4WD wagon<\/a> tend to rack up plenty of miles on their cars<\/a>. The ordinary Toyota Tercel of the 1990s<\/a>, however, was a bargain-basement cheap econo-commuter that wasn’t worth enough to fix when it got old and broke something expensive, and you won’t find many junkyard examples with big miles (in fact, just the opposite<\/a>). Today’s Junkyard Gem is one Tercel that beat the odds and came quite close to the 400,000-mile mark before a crash ended its career at age 24.<\/p>\n

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That’s more than 13,850 miles per year during the course of this car’s life, or the distance of 14\u00bd trips around the Earth’s Equator<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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It would have kept driving, too, but then it got sideswiped (probably while parked) and a two-door sedan with half its doors nonfunctional is a big hassle to live with. This damage would have been worth fixing on a 1992 Lexus LS 400<\/a>, but not on a lowly Tercel.<\/p>\n

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In 1996, the Tercel was available as a two- or four-door sedan (the last model year here for the hatchback version was 1990). The MSRP for this car was $10,348, or about $19,890 in 2022 dollars. That year, you could get the miserably stripped-down Honda Civic<\/a> CX hatchback for $9,890, the wretchedly tiny Geo Metro<\/a> hatchback for $8,380 (its Suzuki Swift<\/a> twin was $8,689), the equally tiny Ford<\/a> Aspire hatchback for $8,790, a primitive Dodge<\/a>\/Plymouth Neon<\/a> two-door for $9,495, a still-a-Colt Mitsubishi Mirage<\/a> two-door for $9,989, or a generic-as-it-gets Hyundai Accent<\/a> hatchback for just $8,079. How about a Kia Sephia<\/a> four-door for only $8,895? I think I’d have bought the Civic<\/a> CX or maybe even the Accent (though it was not yet clear that Hyundais<\/a> were pretty decent cars by the middle 1990s), but the Tercel offered a lot of build quality for the price.<\/p>\n

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I’ve owned and daily-driven several<\/a> 1983-1988 Tercel wagons plus a 1990 hatchback, and I thought they were no fun at all to drive but admirably well bolted together and easy to work on.<\/p>\n

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This one has a 1.5-liter (actually just barely over 1.45-liter, but we’ll round up) 5E-FE engine, rated at 92 horsepower.<\/p>\n

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An automatic transmission was available (for an extra 700 bucks, or $1,345 today), but that seems like a frivolous expense for such a cheap car<\/a>. Believe it or not, the base transmission in the 1996 Tercel was a four-speed manual<\/a>, making it the very last four-on-the-floor car available new in the United States<\/a>. I’m not sure how much this five-speed upgrade cost the original buyer of this car, but it couldn’t have been much; it’s possible that late-model-year ’96 Tercels got a five-speed at no extra cost.<\/p>\n

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Believe it or not, there’s both air conditioning ($900, or $1,730 now)\u00a0and<\/em> the combination cassette\/CD player deck (a staggering $914, or $1,755 after inflation). Why not just get a Corolla<\/a> (though it’s possible that someone swapped in junkyard-obtained audio hardware later on, as I’ve done many times)?<\/p>\n

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Pinstripes!<\/p>\n

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The body filler on the hood shows that some owner cared about this car enough to get some dents repaired<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

The Tercel remained available in the United States through 1998, after which it was replaced by the Echo<\/a>.\u00a0These are the times. This is the car.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the highest believable odometer reading I’ve ever seen on a discarded car during my junkyard travels was a 1990 Volvo 240 with 626,476 miles, I spot so many junked Toyotas with better than 300,000 miles that I don’t consider them very noteworthy. However, nearly all of those soon-to-be-crushed 300K-plus Toyotas are Camrys and Previas, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36638,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}