Wanted to get a second post out tonight to have a couple items here for when you all start visiting. This post is about my second car. It was a 1989 Toyota Corolla FX. It was not my first choice of vehicle for college as at the time, I desperately wanted an 89 Pontiac Grand AM. It was the coolest car out there with all the buttons and options it had. Horribly unreliable though. This was of course after my infatuation with my Grandma’s 89 Mercury Cougar LS which had slipped through my fingers. More on that later…
Back to the Corolla. This car was what was nearly beaten into me as a reliable vehicle for college by my parents. An experience both them and I don’t want to repeat as there were many arguments over it in years to come but a learning exercise just the same. I put together all the money I had received from my high school graduation party and everything I had saved and wrote a check out for $750. That was the biggest check I had to write in my life at the time and it went to a really nice couple who wanted something family oriented now that they were going to have kids.
The Corolla had less than 100,000 on it and for the year, it was great! It didn’t need any work. It had AC and a rear window wiper as options but stock everything else. No power windows, air bags, locks, or anything else. Pretty stripped down but for reliability, that’s what you needed. It was a 5-speed manual which made the gas mileage better and cheap for me as a college student. It was a dark gray color and we found out later that it must have been repainted at some point to a lighter grey than the original. There was one rust spot at the time and it was on a front corner of the hood. My Dad and I Bondo’ed the hood and that’s when we found out that the paint was actually lighter than the factory paint option. In the end, we couldn’t match the paint so we painted a stripe across the hood and added a pin stripe. It looked cool. When I occasionally see one or pictures of one today, I don’t know how I could have thought that any part of that car looked cool.
It was a 2-door coupe and was super sluggish. At the time, Toyota had the option of getting the fuel injected engine or the carburetted one and again for reliability, it was carburetted. That car was in fact very reliable (thanks Mom and Dad!) up until the day it totally died. I drove it back and forth from college to home (a couple hours each way) on many weekends as well as carted my friends all around. I took it on long trips and used it for work internships. I was so surprised at hiw much the hatchback could hold! my whole dorm room fit in there. Well, almost. The Corolla never left me stranded anywhere and nothing ever broke. Well worth the money! One thing I did add to it was cruise control. I saved some additional funds from summer work and had an after-market one installed.
The Corolla FX’s demise came on the Friday before a 4th of July weekend on my way home from a day at the office as an intern the summer between my Junior and Senior year of college. A wire from the ignition fell onto the engine block and melted. When the short happened, it fried the car’s computer which in 2001 wasn’t available to purchase any longer. The repair shop investigated and found a $2500 solution (That’s what I remember it being. Maybe it was less.). With the repair being at least double what the car was worth, I sold it to the repair shop for $50. I believe it had around 150,000 miles on it. I remember when (because I’m a geeky engineer) the odometer turned 101010.1. That was so cool. I have yet to witness a car hitting that same reading since.
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