Well, how to I begin to explain this car? This was a daily driver for various members of the family at various times, but it was originally bought as Jon's college car. It's a rusty beater that refused to die and ran great once we put a decent carb on it. Ugly, but fun. If it wasn't for the rust, I'd have brought it back from the near-dead. It had a great collection of performance parts on it and even more sitting in the garage that could be used on it, but in the end it was not worth my time to do much with it anymore. It's gone to the great part car place in the sky.

• Weber 32/26DGEV carb with completely functional emissions systems - passes WA emissions with flying colors!
• Alloy wheels (not pictured) and nice tires
• Doug Thorley header and complete performance exhaust system
• MSD 5 ignition box w/tach adaptor
• New catalytic converter

There was easily $1000 worth of performance parts on or with the car - the carb setup alone was worth $400, the header was $200, the exhaust was another $200, tires and wheels are $500 easily, plus it was wrapped in an entire running and well optioned vehicle (AC, power steering, full instrumentation, rear defroster, rear wiper/washer, and CD player) with all of the parts that exactly fit another 1980-1983 Toyota Corolla. It was a good deal for someone who had a nice stock 1980-1983 Corolla and wanted to spice it up with the common performance upgrades like carb, exhaust, ignition, and wheels/tires. I parted it out and made more than a few folks happy.

The history of the Rowand Corolla - by Mom

This car came into our family many years ago. It was purchased for our oldest son as his driver. That way I didn't have to get up in the middle of the night and pick him up from work. He was very proud of her and loved her deeply. When he graduated from high school, we sold him the car for $1 and he was very excited!

However, after he graduated high school and went to a town two hours away from his family (and his mechanic/father), he started having trouble with it. What kind of trouble I couldn't tell you, Mike is the mechanic. Anyway, it was engine trouble. So it was determined since Jon's work was delivering pizza, that he needed a more reliable car.

Mike, being the mechanic that he is (and knowing the car had air conditioning) bought the vehicle from Jon (even though it wouldn't run at the time) and helped Jon find another vehicle. So, we had it towed to our house and now the Corolla was ours again including the bumper stickers Jon attached.

After working on the engine, Mike had her on the road and running relatively well. However, there was a new carburetor in the garage waiting on another part to come in.

So that's the story of our acquisition of the Corolla and adding it to our fleet of cars.

So now, here's some other pictures of the car and stuff that goes on or in the car:

Here are the wheels:

The Dismantling

Yet another car has gone to the great junkyard in the sky. I parted it out to get cash for other projects. Very little is still available, but there are a few pieces laying around, so ask if you want something. In particular, I still have the original carb sitting on a shelf - somehow it survived and is still in what looks to be usable condition. And yes, my daughter did help me with this. She stepped on the brakes so I could unbolt the wheels after the car was jacked up -  she's was a very good little helper.

Purchasing Order

This was Car #12. The first car I bought for my son. My first experience with actually doing performance upgrades on a non-American car. My first experience with electronic carburetion - and it was all bad.

Comments? Kudos? Got some parts you'd like to buy/sell/barter/swap? Nasty comments about my web page so far? You can email Mike or Debbie.

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Page last updated 03/29/2009 07:53:15 PM