I know these sort of “listicle” articles (the name is from a portmanteau of “list” and “testicle”) are often derided as internet filler-crap, but I have to be honest: sometimes, they’re just right. And I think now is one of those times, because I want to tell you some interesting things about the first-generation Toyota Tercel 4WD wagon, but I don’t necessarily want to do a huge deep-dive, at least not now. I just want to make you a nice sandwich, not a full dinner, because it’s Friday afternoon and, full disclosure, I have yet to write any Trivia Night questions. So, indulge me, please, and let’s just consider this handful of fascinating things about this wonderfully peculiar car.
The First Thing: Badging On The Inside Only Visible From The Outside
Look at this; I’m pretty sure this is the only car ever made (I’ll likely get proven wrong with that, but certainly the only mass-market car made, at least) that has badging designed for exterior viewing but is mounted or installed on the inside of the car. In this case, the TOYOTA logo is molded into the plastic trim in the cargo area, but on the outer surface, and can only be seen through the cargo area window, from outside the car.
It’s already strange to block window area with plastic as it is – why have a bigger piece of glass if you’re just going to block the lower two inches of it? It’s such a strange design choice, and makes this one of the few cars that can lose some of its identifying badging if the windows are dirty.
The Second Thing: It Had A Styling Element Nicknamed The ATM On The Back
This was always the first thing I noticed about these Tercel 4WD wagons: the deeply strange and wonderful and clunky styling decision to incorporate license plate, tailgate handle, and reverse lamp into the largest chunk of gray plastic Toyota’s advanced manufacturing might was capable of producing. I mean, look at this thing:
It’s amazing, right? People called it the ATM because it was about the size and felt like a wall-mounted automated teller machine. Replace the license plate with a little green-phosphor CRT monitor and stick a little keypad on there and boom, it’s an ’80s ATM, except it has no money to give out, which, if I’m honest, was my usual experience with ATMs in the ’80s.
You can see there were US/Japan-spec versions with a shorter plate and a bigger handle area and a wider-license-plate-area Euro-spec one that also incorporated a rear foglamp. I don’t know exactly why I like this so much, but there’s something about the wonderfully ham-fisted way it conveys “ruggedness” by making these normally afterthought-level car design elements into this huge, robust thing that looks like a military grade unit called a 2709-A Rear Identification Tag Housing with Integrated Rearward Travel Illumination System, or something.
Also, for something that big and bulky, how the hell did they not incorporate that little locking knob into it? That’s ridiculous!
Thing The Third: The Engine Layout Of These Tercels Is Way Weirder Than You’d Think
So, the thing about Toyota that you likely know is that they tend to be a very conservative company, technologically. They usually are late to most industry-wide advancements because they don’t want to do anything until they know it works well. That’s why they were one of the last major automakers to embrace transverse engines and FWD, or, really FWD at all. In fact, the Tercel was their first mass-production FWD car, and they didn’t even feel ready to do a transverse FWD setup, so they hedged their bets and made the Tercel a longitudinal FWD layout.
This is hardly the most common FWD setup, but it’s by no means unheard of. Cord was doing it very early on, and Citroën has been doing it this way since the 1930s, and companies like Auto Union (and then later as Audi) have been doing it, too. Oh, and Saab, of course. But almost all of these companies would either have the transmission ahead of the engine, or mount the engine well ahead of the transmission.
Toyota looked to a much more obscure source for how they pulled this off: Triumph.
Yep, Triumph. The Triumph 1300, in fact, which had a longitudinal engine and a transmission shoved in below the engine with the power taken off the front of the transmission, below the engine’s sump. It was weird; there’s a great article about it here, and how it influenced Toyota.
The result for Toyota’s first FWD car was that odd sort of squiggle-shaped drivetrain you see up there. One plus of this strange layout was that it made taking power to the back wheels relatively easy, as you can see behind that engine diagram, with an extra driveshaft off the back of the transmission to a differential at the rear. This let the Tercel 4WD switch from FWD to 4WD pretty easily. It’s still just strange.
The Fourth Thing: These Things Had A Granny Gear!
How did I not know about this before? You know what a granny gear is, right? It’s an ultra-low sub-first gear used for things like towing stuff or pulling an obstinate yak out of your garden. I have one on my old Ford F-150, and that’s the sort of context you expect these things to exist in. On a little Japanese economy wagon? Not so much. And yet here it is, an ultra-low gear to help that perhaps underpowered 63 horsepower engine get your little wagon through mud bogs or deep sand or whatever. It was called EL (extra low) in the Tercel, and could only be engaged in 4WD mode, I guess to keep people from laying rubber at every stoplight.
Finally, The Fifth: They Plopped One Of These On A Real Iceberg For Ads And Some Other Stuff
From what I’ve heard, the iceberg you see in the ad above is a real iceberg off the Alaskan coast, and it sank alarmingly when the Tercel was placed on it, via helicopter. For whatever reason, Toyota had some real iceberg mania at the time, and even shot ads with the regular front wheel drive, not intended for off-road use Tercel on, if not the same iceberg, something quite similar:
Why? I’m not sure. Was it just because of the “tip of the iceberg” tagline, or did that just come after it was established that whomever was in charge of these ads had a major iceberg kink? I have no idea.
Oh, speaking of wintry ads, here’s one for the Japanese market version of the car, which was called the Sprinter Carib over there, and “Carib” was not short for “Caribbean,” but rather “caribou.”
Also, that’s an absolutely absurd amount of effort to make a shitty yet literal sno-cone. Just eat some ice cream, dummies!
Oh, and the Tercel 4WD had some fantastic lumberjack-plaid seats and the same inclinometer unit that Toyota put on the Land Cruisers!
There! Now we all appreciate these peculiar boxy beasts just a bit more than we did before, don’t we? If so, then I have done my job here. Go in peace.
As Jesse Pinkman found out on Breaking Bad these things are almost invisible.
That show has some very interesting vehicular casting.
Have had two of these amazing little cars (now I have grown up and updated to a 1988 Corolla 4wd Wagon) and have worked my way up to Admins on the tercel4wd.com forum.
Tercel 4wds work really well in snow and sand as they are so light even with their little underdone tyres.
I‘m going to add 5 more interesting things:
Link? Asking for a friend who is looking for one please.
Hi Col. visit the forum on Tercel4wd.com or Tercel4wd Wagon discussion, buy trade and sell on facebook.
I forgot to mention there was a Japan only sedan version of the 4wd that looks like it came out of the Lada factory.
An 85 Tercel 4wd was my first car, I loved it. Was a regular on the tercel4wd forum as well back in the day. Eventually had to get rid of it as the maintenance it needed became too much for a daily driver. I still miss it!
Does a granny gear pretty much nullify the need for 4lo? I’ve only ever used first gear in low range driving, but I’m a high speed off roader, not low. Is there a genuine need for multiple low gears?
Subarus of the time had the full low range and were deemed a little bit better off road but for most owners the granny gear is a great option. Never felt lacking in my Tercel 4wd.
My dad grew up on a dairy farm. We had a small hobby farm.
He always recommended wheeling in stages.
1st go as far as you can in 2wd (including airing down w/in reason)
2nd engage 4wd high only if necessary, added caution recommended
3rd if you have to switch from 4wd high to 4wd low, you’re now as gear advantaged as you’ve got, extra caution
Above applies when offroading by 4×4 alone, if you are wheeling on an atv, bike or side by side have some fun & use the 4×4 if you get stuck.
I agree. The old adage that 4wd just helps you got bogged in a worse spot than a 2wd is true.
However when dealing with sand I’ve just put the Tercel in 4wd EL with tyres at 18psi and pegged it as if you wait till you get bogged in 2wd in sand and then put it in 4wd you would already be to late to drive out.
Not data, but I can speak to this anecdotally. By the time my grandparents’ 83(or 84?) Tercel was handed down to me, I had been driving 80s OHV & OHC manual Hi/Lo range Subarus for about a decade. So, for hooning,* you absolutely want Hi/Lo option: 2nd&3rd in Lo in a 2600-2700lb wagon with 2 people in it and 64ish hp is a lot of fun in the woods. Whereas, in the Tercel, there were times I’d have to come to a stop to go to granny Lo—and then the shift to 2nd was often over-reving, then bogging. I will say that it handled better than the Subarus on pavement.
My experience is all on Forest Service /fire roads in Va, not sand/rock out West. Also of note is that the range of tires available for 13” rims in the early 2000s wasn’t great-which was part of the reason I got away from those early Subarus in ‘09
*My grandparents bought the Tercel for their place in Arkansas which included a small stream crossing in the driveway. It was perfect for their use case, and got better gas mileage than my Subarus as I recall.( But not by a huge amount: I drove all those shitboxes like the go-pedal was an on/off switch)
I’ve been waiting my whole life for this article
*Chef’s kiss*
When I worked at Toyota Georgetown to put in one and half million square feet of factory space, we nicknamed the 4wd Tercel staff car as the “Turtle” because it was the slowest of the four cars due to it having an automatic transmission (executives drove the Land Cruiser, the other two were the small pickup models with manual transmissions). It may have been slow, but it sure beat walking to get to the other end of the plant.
I daily drove an ’85 SR5 with the manual for a while (2016-2017). Commuted in it daily from Bozeman-Big Sky MT for a winter (55 miles each way in the mountains). It was absolutely amazing, it could handle trails that only side-by-sides were on, the EL gear was awesome for crawling up gravel roads and getting out of snowbanks. The 4WD system could be engaged while rolling – if I spun out at an icy intersection I could put it in neutral, engage the 4wd, slap it in 2nd and get through, then pop it back into fwd after i was moving and had traction.
Literally the best car I’ve ever owned, it was so much fun.
OK, I’m finally a member!
I’ve been following y’all since way back at the other site and ever since you all started this one.
I joined up so I could post about what is, to me, one of the absolutely ugliest cars ever to come out of Japan! In fact, it’s so ugly that I now want one!
Tercel is the falconer’s term for a male falcon. Male falcons, being smaller and less aggressive than females, are NOT desirable, except for breeding purposes! Always thought it was a strange choice of names, kind of like the famous, but short-lived Ford Gelding or the equally short-lived Chrysler Castrato.
I once hiked a back-country two-track in Arches NP. All the way I was picking up pieces of a Tercel–a goodly chunk of that hideous thing on the back hatch was the clencher. The oil patch was about five miles past the first piece of plastic.
Now, how do I go about getting a nice moniker here, instead of my full name (given for what I thought was CC reasons)?
My father had one of these back in the mid 90’s. I absolutely loved it. The little inline four sounded mean (the muffler was slightly rusted out), it would go through anything (as long as you weren’t in a hurry), the plaid seats and that instrument cluster. I had really hoped he would hold on to it and give it to me as my first car. But sadly he sold it to a friend who’s kid was a few years older than me and had just turned 16. I was soo bummed. I’ve been tempted to buy one several times for the years, but haven’t quite gone through with it yet.
I’ve always wanted one of these tbh. In manual awd guise that is
Literally the best car I’ve ever owned. Daily drove an ’85 SR5 manual for about a year before I had to sell it down the road because of other circumstances.
My cousin had one and we used it for our kayak trips as the shuttle vehicle. One time cousin wasn’t sure the rear wheels were engaged, so I opened the rear doors to check. Yes, they were working. We were on gravel, so it wasn’t obvious to the driver.
I loved these as a child of the 80s. The idea of a car with four wheel drive was notable to me as a kid, and that single reverse light really made it special.
The Tercel engine-transmission layout is similar to the Olds Toronado and other GM FWD longitudinal V8s, but rotated down 90 degrees — under the engine instead of next to it.
One of my favorite Toyotas. I got to ride around in one for a while as a kid back in the mid 90s. It had a lovely beige cloth interior.
Unfortunately, back then Toyota haven’t used any effective rust protection and they were already rusty even back then. Today, there’s very few left.
The Tercels that weren’t used in a dry desert climate haven’t stood a chance against rust.
When we lived in snowy, mountainous Western Pennsylvania my mom was an ICU nurse who positively, absolutely had to get to the hospital ‘on the other side of the mountain’. She drove one of these. She loved it and it never failed her. When it was about 5? years old, we moved to Virginia, and the innocents at the mandatory Safety Inspection had never seen Pennsylvania rust before. They failed it so hard, they refused to let my mom drive it home. She actually cried when she lost that car.
Kinda like an early Subaru 4WD.
Not surprising, what is surprising is that didn’t make your list.
I disliked how these vehicles were using a carburator. In northern Minnesota, the flat topography were friendly to the lack of horsepower of these Toyotas, but trying having the carb presented hard starting during -10+F weather. The part-time FWD was cool though.
My Dad’s 1978 VW Bus/Transporter had no problems starting in that kind of weather (with mechanical fuel injection). Plus, we had the optional ‘gas’ heater to keep us alive during the extremely cold temps in northern MN. And honestly, the higher ground clearance of our “Bus” made traversing plowed-snow mounds easier than the Tercel.
Most economy cars of the era had carbs. The ones on the Tercel 4wd have an auto choke and work fine in cold areas. They were exported to Norway, Greenland, Iceland etc and some are still in use there! My Vanagon has the Bosch mech fuel injection and I would not call it more reliable than the Aisin carb on the Tercel.
My 86 Corolla SR5 (automatic, unfortunately) was also carbureted. Granted, it didn’t get -10F where I grew up, but one pump of the gas pedal before cranking it over, and it would start right up in the winter.
Ah the listicle, the foam peanut of the internet (not this one of course).
I always assumed the term came from Listicles the Greek god of inventory.
Testicles huh? Learn something new every day.
Make all the listicles you want, Torch… just as long as you spare us the slideshows.
Major iceberg kink? That sounds like a titanic problem.
Take your filthy star.
I always loved these. My neighbors had two, his and hers, growing up and later sold one to my cousin for $1 on the condition that we “get it the hell off his property pronto!”
After college, I was living in Vermont. I was quite jealous when a wealthy friend bought one of these, SR5, blue.
A few years later I had a bit more money and bought the ordinary but good 1991 Toyota Corolla wagon. I should have splurged for the Honda Civic si 4wd Wagon in red with white wheels. About the same time my parents bought a Corolla Wagon 4wd, with locking center diff and various design cues the carried over from the Tercel.
Love that Civic wagon.
I had a Tomica toy Sprinter Carib as a kid and always assumed Carib was short for Caribbean somehow even though it didn’t make sense. TIL.
Perhaps the Toyota wording on the interior plastic trim was originally intended to be on the bed rail of the Tercel Baja?
Oh the nostalgia. My mom had one of these when I was a kid. Same brown interior with plaid seats shown. It was a weird shade of beige/yellow. Like a faded plastic computer case that sat in the sun for too long. However, it was an absolutely perfect (at the time) car for her. It never once hesitated in snow travel (grew up in New Hampshire). Car was decent on gas and hauled all the groceries and our little punk asses to and fro’ without complaint. She later traded it in for a early 90’s Corolla All-Trac. Gotta say I loved that old Tercel.
I’ve had two Tercel 4wd and now have a Corolla Alltrac. Tercel was better off road but the Corolla is 50% more powerful
Nice! I am jealous. I also owned a Corolla all-trac for 4 years. Definitely more powerful. Sadly something gave up on the transmission and college-age me was too poor and dumb to fix it. Wouldnt come out of 1st gear at all. I put it on ebay motors and some lady won the auction for a grand total of $80. After ebay and Paypal fees I actually lost about $15 selling the damn thing.
Best part was she showed up to pick it up and put some plates on it and drove it away… She probably knew something I didn’t. haha.
The alltrac gearbox is very similar in design to the Celica GT four 185 so is pretty robust. perhaps it was the linkages or just needed the transfluid replaced. The Corollas are pretty quirky themselves but are holding their value.
Ahh, such a dandy little car. My aunt had one of these for her rural mail route before her RHD cherokee. Swore that thing would climb Mt. Everest.
Can confirm, mine crawled right up forest service roads that most people would only tackle in an ATV or SxS.
(LOL)