When Corona was still a car

The mid-range sedan has achieved a certain fame during its time: It was not for nothing that it was once one of the best-selling cars by Toyota and at the same time the spearhead for export to Europe, according to press spokesman Thomas Schalberger.

The history of the Corona began in 1957. The limousine with the Spanish name for Krone was intended to mark the entry into the luxury class and fill the gap to the flagship Crown, which was given the English word for Krone. While the first generations were primarily intended for the Japanese market and there was especially a head-to-head race with the Nissan Bluebird, the Corona later became the exponent of the internationalization of the business.

Trio am Start: Celica, Corolla und Corona

“When Toyota officially started business in Germany in 1971, almost exactly 50 years ago, the Corona was part of the starting line-up alongside Corolla and Celica,” reports Schalberger from the company chronicle. And like a certificate of honor, they proudly present a front page of the “Auto Zeitung” from spring 1973 at the German headquarters in Cologne. There, the editors compare the flagship of the import fleet with the Opel Rekord as the top dog in the middle class and raise the question: “When will the Japanese overtake? the Germans?”

The sedan also scored points in the USA and was voted import car of the year in 1969. The success can be read in many statistics: The Corona was repeatedly the most successful model in Japan, in 1971 the total production reached three million and over the years the series stayed at the top of Toyota’s sales statistics. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that its star began to decline. In 1996, the Japanese completely stopped production after almost 40 years and over ten million copies.

Because the Corona, as Toyota itself admits, is only able to show the necessary class to a very limited extent in this country, and the number of units remains “rather clear”, it was replaced by the Carina in 1983 and is correspondingly rare today. But if you still manage to get behind the wheel of a Mark II from the mid-1970s, for example, you will be traveling back to a time when long-distance trains were still called Trans Europa Express, baguettes were still sold by the meter and sushi was not on every corner gave.

trip to the past

Even if the Mark II has proud double headlights and the chroniclers rave about the Coke-Bottle design in retrospect: From the outside, the sedan, drawn with flowing lines, looks rather inconspicuous. But it arouses nostalgic feelings at the latest during the seat rehearsal: sunk deep into the seats with the wine-red synthetic leather applications, the driver’s gaze wanders over a dashboard with three angular instead of round instruments, which was almost progressive for the time. The hands grip a steering wheel that today seems far too big and too thin. And again and again the arm searches for the skinny switch stick that protrudes far into the room.

The longer you are on the road, the more often you discover an idiosyncratic Corona logo: At the time it was more likely to be a mixture of sun and crown and in any case prestigious, in the Covid 19 era it suddenly reminds us suspiciously of those virus animations that gave us encounter daily in the news. If the designers had known this 50 years ago, they would certainly have printed other ornaments on the backrests, on the steering wheel and in the cockpit.

In contrast, the drive technology, which even Toyota praises as conventional, is inconspicuous in the best sense of the word. The 2.0-liter four-cylinder with its 65 kW / 89 PS is at best in the midfield and Europeans could only dream of driving the Japanese top version with 92 kW / 125 PS. In return, the Corona scored with a quality that was by no means taken for granted: breakdown-free reliability. That also makes it attractive as a classic car, says Schalberger.

The Japanese are rare and correspondingly expensive

Even with a sober giant like Toyota, there are more passionate vintage cars than the Corona, which drive better and look more attractive. But you can’t deny the sedan a certain fascination. The longer you are on the road with her, the greater the risk of infection. And very similar to the pandemic, treatment is comparatively difficult and sometimes lengthy. Used corona are almost as rare as the vaccine the whole world is waiting for.

And if you find a reasonably well-preserved copy on the usual online portals, you have to reckon with five-digit prices and sometimes go as far as England or Portugal. A visit to the Toyota collection, which the manufacturer and three Corona has preserved in Cologne and opens once a month for the general public, promises at least short-term relief – but only when Corona allows it again.

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