Campbell Street Sighting - 1993 Toyota Supra

It could be argued that the fourth-generation Toyota Supra is one of the most iconic sports coupes of the 1990s. It enjoys notoriety as one of the stars of the original Fast & Furious film and has long been associated with road course racing, amateur street racing and drift culture alike.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1972 Toyota Corona Mark II 1900 Automatic Wagon

For every model of car that someone values and keeps in great condition, there is someone else who beats up on theirs. Such is the case with the Toyota Corona Mark II station wagon that I posted earlier this week. The Corona isn't a terribly valuable vehicle but it is rather rare in the US. This has an upside and a downside: rarity makes them interesting, but it also makes parts hard to find. The guy who owns the red Corona 4x4 trail rig basically has a hacked-up Toyota body on top of a truck chassis. The car probably reached the point where the body panels were too damaged to justify repairing and he just decided to have fun with it. Then there's this Corona Mark II, basically identical except one or two years newer. But my goodness, what a difference in terms of condition.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1981 Toyota Celica GTA 10th Anniversary Sunchaser

I love the story behind this car. When I was going to college in San Francisco, I used to occasionally see a very tired-looking black and beige Toyota Celica driving around or parked during my walks after class. When I realized the Celica was in fact a rare Sunchaser convertible, I vowed to photograph it for this blog. Due to its poor condition at the time I feared it would soon be going to the junkyard.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1976 Toyota Corolla Deluxe Liftback

When my parents were just starting out, they had a choice to make: make a down payment on a small suburban ranch house or buy a Toyota Corolla SR5 Liftback. They picked the house. It was a wise choice, but the Corolla Liftback was and still is an interesting offering in the economy-car market of the era. I've always liked them, especially in lemon yellow.

Oakland Street Sighting - 1966 Toyota Stout 1900 Pickup

An old Toyota pickup to me is nothing special. The Hilux and its successor, the "Truck" or "Pickup" are mostly just old trucks driven by landscapers and junk collection companies. A vintage 1960s-era Toyota Stout, on the other hand, is kind of a big deal to find. An unrestored, generally complete Stout that runs is a particularly rare find. Finding one completely at random, forgetting where it was and then finding it again months later completely at random is really something, or at least it is for me.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1970 Toyota Corona Mark II 1900 Wagon 4x4

A lot of the time, when you run across a custom car that's something completely unique, someone else has already posted something about it online. That makes research a lot easier. But sometimes it's a Frankenstein car and in some cases, the history isn't publicly known. All I know is I've seen this 1970 Toyota Corona Mark II wagon at least three times around the Bay Area since 2010 and I still know very little about it.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1973 Toyota Corona Mark II

If you're a fan of old Hong Kong action movies, you've probably seen
some Toyota Corona Mark IIs ramping through the air and getting smashed into other nondescript Japanese compacts as collateral damage from a car chase. Or perhaps you spotted one of these as highway traffic in an episode of CHiPs. But apart from period TV footage, these cars don't appear to have survived in significant numbers. I was pretty excited to see this one on what Murilee Martin (of Jalopnik and The Truth About Cars) called the "Island the Rust Forgot", Alameda.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1982 Toyota Starlet S

Admittedly, when searching for notable cars to photograph and document here, I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the compact economy runabouts of the 1980s. But every now and then there is a bright star among the sea of rattly little crapcans. One such econobox that now has something of a small cult following is the Toyota Starlet.

Best of the Rest: Little Luggers

1969-72 Datsun 521 camper, San Francisco

1975-78 Toyota Truck, San Francisco

1978 Chevrolet LUV pickup, San Francisco

1978 Ford Courier pickup, Castro Valley

1982-84 Mazda B2000 Sundowner pickup, San Francisco

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1978 Toyota Cressida

Most of the classics I find on the streets in this state are, well, from this state. Sometimes someone is kind enough to drive across the country just so I can photograph their ride. That is why someone would leave the great state of Vermont, right? Right?

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1970 Toyota Corona Deluxe

I've come to respect a number of old economy cars, some of which are maligned for being terrible even if that reputation is undeserved. This week we're looking at cheap cars of the 1970s.

Los Angeles Street Sighting - 1970 Toyota Corona Mark II

Rounding out this series of quote-unquote "Big Three" Summer Road Trip Wagons is one from the most recent addition to the top-seller podium: Toyota. For a few years, Toyota pulled ahead of GM in North American sales, taking the #1 spot. That lead, of course, imploded when the entire news media and blogosphere jumped on Toyota for its unintended acceleration scandal, and subsequent recall of just about every Toyota model sold in the US for some problem or another.

Petaluma Street Sighting - 1981 Toyota Celica GT Sunchaser

Some of you may be old enough to remember that from 1977 until the early 1980s, it wasn't really possible to buy a new convertible in the United States. I'm not that old, but I do research.
I guess late in the disco era, with hairy men in tight jeans going nuts for T-tops and car thieves slicing up ragtops, nobody wanted convertibles anymore. Then came the '80s and apparently someone decided it was time to offer convertibles again, but not right away. If you wanted a convertible you could always contract a coachbuilder to chop the roof off your coupe and turn it into a ragtop. That's what led to stopgap quasi-verts like this 1981 Toyota Celica GT Sunchaser.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1973 Toyota Corona Deluxe

Last year I featured a 1974 Toyota Corona as my first Japanese "Street Sighting". Some time after that, I photographed another old Corona with a similar body but a different front end. It took a fair amount of Googling to determine what year this second car was, but the oddly Dodgelike crossbar grille turned out to be a 1973 Corona Deluxe.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1981 Toyota Corolla Liftback

My, my. A Corolla. You must really be scraping the bottom of the barrel to be featuring a Corolla, Jay...

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1978 Toyota Truck

A lot of people associate old Toyota pickup trucks with gardeners, trolling around with a couple of lawn mowers and yard tools in the bed. Usually such trucks are pretty beat up and rusty, since they see a lot of abuse and, well, old Toyotas run forever but their beds tend to rust out. Toyota trucks used to be so basic that, for a long time, they didn't even have a name. Originally sold as the Hilux in the United States, the truck was renamed - you guessed it - Truck in 1975. The name was changed to Pickup in 1979 and didn't regain an actual name until 1995, when Toyota renamed its compact pickup Tacoma.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1976 Toyota Corolla

The Toyota Corolla is the best-selling model in history, with over 35 million sold since 1966. The name was already ten years old by the time this car rolled off the assembly line. More than thirty years later, this example is still kicking around San Francisco. I can't even imagine how many miles are probably on it. It probably wears its original paint, what's left of it, and the body panels look original.

This Corolla has had a rough life. I've seen some old Toyotas in the city that looked really clean for their age. This isn't one of them. It has body damage and rust from decades in SF traffic and living in salt air. What makes it notable though, is the fact that it's a mid-70s Toyota that's still running. San Francisco isn't kind to old cars, so most drivers would have junked a '76 Corolla and bought a new car by now. I suppose for some people, it's worth more to have a cheap and relatively efficient old car that can be bumped and scraped without much fear of decreasing its value than it is to have the green cred of a shiny new Prius.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1971 Toyota Corona

I've seen several older Japanese cars in SF. This 1974 [EDIT: 1971] Toyota Corona Deluxe is one of the oldest Toyotas I've spotted there, and it's the third-oldest Corona I've seen in the city. This must have been pretty loaded in its day, seeing as this one had the automatic transmission option so rarely seen on imported cars of that era. I guess if you want to go mainstream in the US, it helps to have an automatic available. It makes sense though, in a city with such steep hills. This Corona has had a pretty careful owner and shows surprisingly little rust for its age and location only a mile from the Bay.