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.
The amazement over the 4WD Tercel as being a weird and quirky machine becomes clear if you read the statement from Takayasu Honda about the development of the eight generation Corolla (E8). Honda was chief engineer of the 8th generation Corolla and his task was to move the Corolla platform to front wheel drive. Toyota recently launched the Tercel to see how customers would feel about front wheel drive, but it wasn’t clear how the Corolla platform would fare on front wheel drive.So the team made a proof of concept by mating a Tercel frontend to a Corolla rearend. It allowed testing all the fwd stuff, but also making it a 4WD for enjoyment of the driver. This worked out fine and the FWD Corolla project got the green light.
The 8th generation Corolla and Sprinter received more development and Toyota decided to make the drive train transverse. Honda wasn’t 100% sure they could make the transverse FWD Corolla handle well enough, so they decided to keep the coupe FR for the 8th generation and released it with the all new 16 valve 4A-GE engine. This gave us the excellent AE86 and I’m really thankful for that little bit of doubt!
At the same time the 4WD proof of concept was so well liked, Toyota decided to launch the 4WD in Japan as the Sprinter Carib.
Had a blue one in the late ‘80s. Great car for the price (think we paid like $500 from the original owner)
Sadly the car was totaled in a hit and run in San Francisco.
I had one of these for a few months, it was every bit as rad as you imagined. It was also light enough, and geared so low that it didn’t feel quite as slow as you would think (the percieved durability of it also did little to discourage revving it to valve float between shifts). I was bummed when the control arm mounts in the body rotted away enough that repair wasn’t really viable with the rest of the structural rust.
Inclinometers are my absolute favorite extinct car feature. I am sure modern off roaders have a version in their touchpad package, but the actual chonker 3 part nav stack that used to adorn Monteros and the like was super cool.
This is my time! My friend has REBUILT 3 of these in the last 18 months.
He literally bought four of them for $2,000 from a car hoarder, who didn’t wrench. Changing the fluids, fixing the brakes, and cleaning the fuel injectors got 3 of them on the road. The last one needs a new head gasket, and will need the head honed. We are doing that in a week or three.
If you’re around the West Elk Mountains in Colorado Wine country, you’ll likely see one of these on the road. 🙂
You missed the opportunity to share the two best Carib commercials on the YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFhzWyjnIhA
Happy choice!
I don’t think I’ve seen one on the road…or by the side of the road in 20 years
Always thought these were really cool
They were great cars, but just rusted like crazy. I still see them in mountain towns.
I owned one of these. Believe it or not, got my first speeding ticket in it. Granted it was in a national park, and I was going 45 in a 35. It was not a fast car, but it was damn near unstoppable.
My college photography prof had one of these. It’s probably the best vehicle that a college photography prof in the 80’s could possibly own.
One of these was famously owned by a medical space crab.
A few more to go with Jason and commenter Matt’s, to make a baker’s dozen total.
1984 Toyota Tercel (AL25) SR5 4WD Wagon | car_spots_aus | Flickr
I had that panel on the ATM of my Victorian registered Tercel. I just plugged in the disconnected licence plate lights and lit my little Tercel numberplate up for a while.
The design rule about not having the licence plate off centre must have been altered by the time the land rover discovery got here in the late 80’s
I always like the Tercel. Now I feel I need one of those 4WD
Low mini Land Cruisers. They’re as cool as an iceberg.
This article is every reason why I come to this site
My uncle had one of these bought used in the mid 90s. Served him well for a couple of years as his beater car to get to and from work. When my cousin parked it at a mall someone smashed the rear glass to steal a bike from the back. Being the cheap man he is (and knowing he wasn’t keeping the car much longer) he bought a big lid from a rubber maid container and cut it to size.
They sold theses things new when I was a poor high school kid. I would have loved one. My mom as a little 2 door toyota with the all glass hatch. I do not think they sold as many as they could as they were crossovers way before their time.
As a Toyota owner and believer, (since 1978), wanted one of these ever since day one. Had extensive experienced abusing a 2 dr Tercel 5 sp. so this just felt right. Drove a few but the money and life never quite lined up to make it happen.
Thanks! Now can go down that rabbit hole.
One of these in great shape, M/T, has become my new Holy Grail. Seriously am going to look for one of these. Just a special car. Now to find the Talking Heads CD and be ready to rock 1980s style again.
Screw those snooty French and their wussy cars.
And you may ask yourself, “Where is that large automobile?”
So want to serve sandwich but no dinner? Great idea i like not being swamped in sata/ facts. Man this was a 20 course meal. Blah blah blah. Do two articles you lost my attention.
“So want to serve sandwich but no dinner? Great idea i like not being swamped in sata/ facts. Man this was a 20 course meal. Blah blah blah. Do two articles you lost my attention.”
-William S. Burroughs-
…
…
What?
Yeah well, JT, thanks a lot man, now I want one of those too…
It also inspired the asymetric license plate placement on the Land Rover Discovery I think.
I could have used a granny gear today: We were cruising with the car club and ended up far out in a hilly forrest, where an old 911 of one of my friends wouldn’t start, so I had to pull start him with a tow rope from behind my Figaro (with small smooth 12 inch wheels, front wheel drive, automatic transmission and only 76hp), but we succeeded and got home okay.
Yes we do, mission accomplished.
These seemed unremarkable at the time, but I would have a seriously hard time resisting modern Toyota reliability were they ever to combine it with such relentlessly square styling as Tercel and several other Toyotas of the 1980s wore so well.
Had a Carib as a company car for a while, would have been the next gen though I think.
While it doesn’t have the low gearing, I like to think of the Toyota Probox AWD as being the modern = of this..
I think your are right. I am waiting for the Landcruiser TJ concept of a few years back that really nails the passenger side of things rather than the probox which is more commercial.