Three Pedals and Long Roofs: 1985 Subaru GL vs 1995 Toyota Corolla

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Welcome back! Today, we’re looking at a pair of small stickshift wagons. One of them has some cool toys but hasn’t been well cared for, and the other is ol’ reliable, but about as exciting as plain oatmeal. We’ll get to those shortly, but first, let’s see which car you preferred in our 100th Showdown Extravaganza yesterday:

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Yeah, that’s where I’m at too. I like them both, obviously, but I get the feeling I’d get a chance at a better Fiero, or a lesser one for cheaper. The Barracuda feels more like a “now or never” opportunity. I can’t afford either one right now, but if I could, I’d go Plymouth.

Now, today we have a couple of cars that aren’t on anybody’s wish list, but they’re such a useful body style that maybe they should be. Small wagons are just practical as hell, and it’s kind of a shame that they’ve been phased out by stumpy blobby crossovers that promise the same utility, but aren’t packaged nearly as well. I’ve selected two wagons that are both 5 speed manuals, just to take that out of the equation, so there’s no dismissing one or the other out of hand based solely on transmission type. But there are enough other differences between them to compare and contrast to keep things interesting. Let’s take a look.

1985 Subaru GL 4×4 Wagon – $2,200

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Engine/drivetrain: 1.8 liter flat 4, 5 speed manual, part-time 4WD

Location: Silverdale, WA

Odometer reading: 119,000 miles

Runs/drives? Yes, but needs a few things

You know those Outbacks and Foresters and whatnot you see absolutely everywhere today? They have this car to thank for their success. Subaru in the ’80s was known for boxy, underpowered cars that were tough as nails and had a lot of weird but cool features available. They didn’t even have model names for most of the lineup in America; instead, you chose a body style (sedan, wagon, or fastback) and a trim level (DL, GL, or GL-10) and mixed and matched as you saw fit.

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This GL wagon would have been in the middle of the range, with a carbureted version of Subaru’s EA-82 flat-four. 4WD was optional in Subarus when this car was built; this car not only has 4WD, but the fancy 4WD system with a low-range transfer case and a lockable center differential. It’s a far cry from the viscous couplings and electronically-controlled limited-slip diffs in today’s AWD systems, but it works a treat in snow or mud.

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Sadly, this Subaru needs some help before it’s really roadworthy. It runs and drives, but has 3 studded tires and a spare on it (really?), the turn signals don’t work and the seller has just been using hand signals instead of replacing what I’m sure is a burned-out relay (c’mon, man), and it has an exhaust leak that the seller hasn’t fixed because he thinks it sounds cool (oh good grief). Basically, it sounds like what this car needs more than anything is an owner who knows what the hell they’re doing, and cares.

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The engine is fed through a Weber carb (presumably some sort of DGV downdraft 2 barrel) in place of the stock Hitachi carb. I don’t know what this change is supposed to gain (performance? reliability? ease of maintenance?), but the seller says it runs well. Shame about all the silly blue paint under the hood, though.

 

1995 Toyota Corolla DX Wagon – $2,000

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Engine/drivetrain: 1.8 liter inline 4, 5 speed manual, FWD

Location: Oakland, CA

Odometer reading: 162,000 miles

Runs/drives? Yep

Now, this car I know well. This is the wagon version of the car I’ve been driving daily for the past two and a half years. As such, I can tell you a few things about it right off the top: it has good strong air conditioning and heat that will freeze or cook you right out of the car as required, it’s highly tolerant of neglect and borderline abuse, and it has a good 100,000 miles left in it at the very least.

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I can also tell you that the driving experience is a lot like the appetizer combo platter at Applebee’s: it’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with it, but you won’t find any unexpected delights or lasting satisfaction. But you will get the exact same reaction from every control, every time, day in and year out, with no surprises. The twin-cam 7A-FE engine in this one is actually 200 CCs bigger than the 4A-FE in my Corolla, yet puts out the same 105 horsepower. It isn’t fast, but it never feels underpowered either. It’s… just fine. Like the rest of the car. And this is before Toyota started softening the ride of their small cars for comfort, so it still handles pretty well. It’s uninspired, but it doesn’t wallow around like the springs are made of jelly.

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Inside, this one is quite a lot nicer and in better shape than my not-even-a-DX base model. I bet it even has such opulent features as a tachometer and intermittent wipers! It’s squeaky-clean inside too, which says something. I can’t stand it when sellers don’t at least empty the trash and vacuum a car before putting it up for sale. Outside, things aren’t as fresh: the clearcoat has a nasty case of eczema (as does mine) and two hubcaps are missing (which is two more than I have). I don’t see any serious dings or wrinkles, but it looks like the left front fender may have been replaced; it’s a slightly different shade of blue from the rest of the car.

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This would be a smart used car purchase if you need something small and economical that still has some decent cargo room. It is not an exciting car. But as I have said in the past, boring cars driven to interesting places to do interesting things are way cooler than exciting cars that only travel the same routes over and over.

So there they are, a couple of Japanese stickshift wagons. One needs some love and attention, and the other is ready to be used hard and ignored. Which one will it be?

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(Image credits: Craigslist sellers)

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89 thoughts on “Three Pedals and Long Roofs: 1985 Subaru GL vs 1995 Toyota Corolla

  1. You had to make this one difficult, didn’t you? Hahaha but seriously, This one is PARTICULARLY hard to choose between the two, as I have love and adoration for both (older) Subarus and (older) Toyotas. Being a former driver of both, it was a tough call to make, but ultimately had to go w/ the Corolla. It’s the last generation that I like, you can dress it up .. ish .. and it’s very rare that you see this generation on the road in my neck of the woods, much less one in long roof guise. I would’ve picked the Subaru, but I know from personal experience that with minimal maintenance, the Toyota will take an act of Congress and some sort of holy scripture to kill it.

  2. I’ll have the Subaru and a 5-pack of head gaskets, please, thank you very much.

    That Corolla SW (or any other E100) is way too common around these parts for me to be able to lust for it (and they can be had for 1/3 of the price and in better shape). The Subaru GL is… well, a Subaru station wagon, which always gets a thumbs up from me.

    1. Those 1.8 EA82 motors don’t eat head gaskets. At all. In 17 years and easily 200k hard miles I never blew one. Even the night I limped home with a plastic grocery bag tied around a busted radiator hose, stopping to let it cool & refill every 6-10 miles didn’t kill my hg.
      The later 2.5 motor really started the head gasket as a consumable reputation, but these are damn solid.

      1. Yeah, my joke is very low hanging fruit and it did cross my mind that maybe these older Subaru engines didn’t have that proble. But my vote for the GL was real, I love these wagons.

          1. Sorry: my joke detector failed to trigger 😉

            I truly hate dropping typos myself. I quell the instant rise in blood pressure by remembering that the Navajos always put a mistake in every rug because ‘only the creator is perfect’
            “Yeah, I >meant< to do that: feet of clay and all that”

  3. That Subaru is a turd IMO. Also hell no for carburators, unless its something that is actually interesting like an old 60s/70s muscle car or land barge I can put up with them in those cases

    That Corolla looks to be pretty well kept, interior is nice and not trashed. If they bothered to change the oil on time that car has another 100,000 miles left in it IMO.

    As far as the crossover hate, have any of you driven the 90s Corolla wagon then drove a late 90s Rav4 or CR-V?? All three of those cars drive about the same but its nice sitting up a bit higher and they are easier to get in/out of. I also prefer the more chair like seating of those little SUVs vs the ass on the ground with your legs straight out in front of you seating position in the Corolla

    About the only pros of the Corolla wagon is better gas mileage and more room than a 90s Rav4(those 1st gens were tiny) The 90s CR V is a brilliant package, its a Tardis, tons of room inside, probably more than that Corolla wagon.

  4. If I read this right, he’s running this car with studded tires in the summer. Is that actually legal? Either way it would be quite noisy which could explain why he says he doesn’t drive it on the highway.

  5. I had a 1990 Corolla wagon, with the three speed auto instead of the manual. And that was slow, so slow that if I had friends in the car I would turn the A/C off to pull out of a parking lot. I had to vote for the Corolla, just because I wish mine had the 5 speed manual.

  6. My nan and pop had a two tone green and silver G-Touring Corolla. I’ll take the rolla wagon just for nostalgia thanks. Also my neighbour has one, and I suspect he’s fitted some sort of after market air intake cos it sounds way better than it ought!

  7. The ’95 Corolla Wagon with 5-speed MT was my first new car purchase. It was a fine car and hauled two dogs, a child and countless loads of lumber from Lowes and Home Depot. In the practicality department it did not disappoint.

    What did disappoint were the rusted out rockers and oil burning engine at about 120k miles. The rust is typical for Michigan winters (it lasted about 11 rust free,) but the oil burning seemed out of character. Maybe the cross country trip only days after purchase didn’t allow the kind of break-in that it required. I don’t know.

    At about 150k miles and 15 years under my ownership, I sold it to a young guy in need of a running vehicle for $750 dollars.

  8. This is really unfair. A horrible specimen of an interesting car, or yet another Toyota appliance that ifg uipkhfdpoid — oh sorry, I just fell asleep on the keyboard.

    My mom bought a 1985 Subaru GL wagon in maroon. It was the first new car she had owned for (checks notes) my entire life, so for us it was the pinnacle of automotivedom for a while. I see in the photo above that the owner is not keeping a donut spare in the engine compartment where it belongs (you can see the circular cutout up against the firewall). One of the odder design choices I’ve seen, but that’s what made Subaru a Subaru!

    Later our fortunes improved and my mom traded-in the GL on a first-generation Ford Explorer, and she’s been with Ford ever since. I find Subarus a lot less interesting now, but I had always been a fan of them going back to when I was a little kid in the 1970s.

  9. My eye is bleeding but I can still see with it so I won’t worry about it. I feel fine. Sex? Um, no thanks. Toyota please. Anyone else notice how good the seats in both cars looked? Did that fabric come from Krypton?

  10. That Subaru is awful. It has way too many signs of some dumb high school kid trying to shine it up and make it go faster with limited knowledge and money. I love all of the blue accents under the hood. Haha. It reminds me of stuff I did with my first car when I was a kid – bass-activated lighting, anyone? That price is way too much for something like that, too. This would be a $500 heap 3 years ago, and a $1000 heap today. That Corolla is pretty crappy looking with the paint, but that is typical of that model and year. It doesn’t have any real rust showing, and wears its miles well, otherwise. No-brainer today. Also – I love those old “accordion” style shifter boots featured in both cars.

    1. +1 on the shift boot…I thought the same thing. They’re not sportscars, so they have appropriate, economical-looking boots. Love it.

      (and I tried to respond on your bucket list ’90s Taurus SHO inclusion yesterday but the site wouldn’t let me for some reason…I guess it didn’t like me saying I liked the first gen, for its big headlights)

      1. Same here. This would be the last place that I would expect to be judged for lighting preference, haha. I’d take any ’89 – ’95. I love the intake manifold as well. I’d jump at any opportunity to show that off to the annoyance of family and friends.

  11. When we found out that we were having twins, the 300ZX had to go. I traded it in for a Subaru wagon about the same year as this one. We beat the crap out of that vehicle and when the kids (and a third one) got too big, we sold it at about 300k miles running great. I know nothing about the Corolla, so there is no point really.

  12. I loved & abused Subarus for 17 years. My last-sold in ‘09-was an ‘87 just like this one. You put a Weber 32/36 DGEV on it because, by the end of their carburettors, there was an insane # of circuits in there, and even a Suby mechanic would tell you to just buy the Weber rather than fight the stock carb. You have to remove the ac & power steering pump or fabricate a weird linkage. Also, those carbs are way over-jetted for that AEA82: mine made good noises, but bogged horribly until that was addressed.

    Obviously I voted for the roo on nostalgia alone—BUT, I would poke around under it really hard for rust: where the ‘mustache’ bar attaches to the unibody locating the irs is a >lovely< place to have hidden rust. Finding that the rust is severe by having a rear corner of the car sink down onto the tire while out on a trail @ 2am is a great story, but I do not wish to relive it.

    One kicker is that parts aren’t as easy to get as they were 15-20 years ago: when I sold my last, none of the stores around here stocked the axles (which were a wear item for me: given how I abused them, I did axle, wheel bearings, ball joint, and outer tie-rod on one side every six months, then the other six months later). The quality of affordable parts had gone down, too.
    No matter: I’d still drive it without fear: they only stranded me once, and that was absolutely MY fault.

  13. Picked the Subie before I re-read and saw all the rust. I don’t want to change my vote, but I would ask them to knock the price down a little more.

  14. Here’s an opinion: That generation of Corolla wagon – and the wagon specifically – is perfectly styled. It’s not exciting, of course, but the looks tell you exactly what it is, there really aren’t any bad lines, and there are just enough flourishes and pleasant shapes that it still looks like something you can go outside and be proud of.

  15. I’m torn about this one. On the one hand I love 80’s and Subaru is a perfect car for the project car to rebuilt and relive my childhood in the car from the era. On the other hand this Subaru is in terrible condition and tires are indicators of problems to come with transmission for example. Toyota is boring but should be fine as a daily driver.
    Both cars are so old that they both belong either to the museum or the junkyard. My vote goes to the Subaru because of that.

  16. The Corolla is newer and Corolla-er, in that Keith Richards will be driving one over the cockroaches long after society has collapsed.

    So, Corolla.

  17. Back in the day, after we wrecked our Corolla/Novas we hit the Subaru’s. My buddy had the GL just like this in red. It was one legged dog slow, but we never had an issue getting up the mountain in blizzard conditions for the best skiing in my life.
    With that said, the 1.8L in this Corolla is only about a three legged dog slow and appears to have been well taken care of minus seasonal waxing. I wouldn’t even put it’s FWD as a disadvantage over the GL’s 4×4, provided you have a proper set of rubber on it.

  18. I’d take the Toyota, but I have to say both remind me – I miss articulated rubber shifter boots!

    There’s something so wonderfully functional about them, which makes them just so appropriate-looking in any non-performance vehicle.

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