1987 Toyota Tercel 2 door hatchback review from North America

This little car ran beautifully with absolutely no major problems. It had a few minor issues like the window rolling mechanism jumping off its track, and the parking brake cable becoming disconnected, but that's to be expected when a car is treated like toy.

Toward the end of its life (wait, it's still out there driving today), it needed an entire new exhaust system as the catalytic convertor failed. Any more driving and I'm sure the head gaskets would have gone next. Its bearings on the back wheels were close to needing a replacement, and something was acting up in the fuel line system, because the engine kept turning over when I turned off the ignition. Before making a decision on replacing all of these items, I just traded it in for my 2nd beater car, a 92 Honda Civic. (running like a champ, BTW).

Whoever is driving my old, fixed up Tercel is probably loving every minute of it.

This is the perfect beater car for someone just getting out of high school!! Treat a Tercel like crap and it will love you for it! I have run this thing on low dirty oil, rustic engine coolant, bald tires, and so much more. All I needed to do to fix these things was a spit shine on the front bumper.

Toyota knows that their cars may not be treated perfectly and their quality shines through for it.

I purchased this car for 800 bucks and ran it 161,000 miles with merely fluid replacements and tune ups. When the emissions tester came out with flashing red alarms saying my car was pumping out more hydrocarbons than a fleet of semis, I decided to call it quits with her.