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.

For some reason almost all the Corona Mark IIs I see are wagons, and all the wagons seem to be automatics. I was a little confused about this one regarding its model year, primarily because it appears that some markets got this front end styling in 1971. US-market advertising and Google searching seems to show two different front ends for '71-72. Usually my solution of running the license plate in California online smog records helps, but this car is smog-exempt since it is pre-1975. Sometimes I get lucky if the car was still being tested in the years immediately following 1996 when the state began keeping online records. That was not the case with this one, so my guess stands at a 1971 model based on the color, probably code 521 Greenish Yellow. That paint was used on Coronas up through 1971. ToyotaReference.com says that Mark IIs were available in Pale Yellow up through '72, but this car looks more like Greenish Yellow. So who knows?

EDIT 5/10/2020 : This car is a 1972 model in Yellow Olivine according to a for sale ad I found. Described as a "barn find" with only 57,000 miles at the time it was posted.

This Corona is one of the cleaner ones I've come across, and one of very few I've seen that wasn't white or red. It has about as much rust and body damage as one would expect to find on a daily driver Japanese car of the era, but still displays well on the street. I like that it has all of its stock hubcaps. For those of you who like a complete walkaround of the car, I apologize. I focused on the rear hatch badges and somehow forgot to snap a full rear shot of the car. I think you can figure out what it looks like. Or, go here.

Photographed July 2016