In Latin Corona means Crown and today's Nice Price or Crack Pipe Toyota has been restored so as to be fit for a king. Its price however, might just prove too princely a sum.
Yesterday's Cobra-powered '70 Bronco looked pretty sweet, but apparently its price did not. In fact, 67% of you, while appreciative of the effort that went into the truck, voted that wild horses couldn't drag you to pay its thirty-two five asking.
Do you have a soft spot in your heart for the third-generation of Toyota's horn-rimmed glasses on wheels, the Corona? If your name's Murilee Martin and a Corona was your first ride you most certainly do, but perhaps others of you also happen to have a jones on for some vintage Toyota steel.
Murilee claims that there's little collectable value in the early Corona's outside of Japan, but Jimny Cricket, don't tell that to the seller of this completely restored 1970 Corona Deluxe. Given such an opinion, he might just book a boat to the Land of the Rising Sun, and that would deprive us of the opportunity to judge both his restoration acumen as well as his sense of the market value for the quaint little cars here.
You might remember the Corona as Toyota's answer to Nissan's Bluebird (510) series. Sadly for Toyota, they didn't have anyone as prominent as Pete Brock to race Coronas and hence today they aren't as sought after as are the Dimes.
This one is pretty cool looking however, with innocuous cream-colored paint capped with a black vinyl roof, a combination that - along with the general boxy lines - gives the car the look, from certain angles, of a Triumph Dolomite.
Power is provided by Toyota's sturdy R-series, likely here an 85-horse 7R which is what I think was dropped into U.S.-bound Coronas. That's backed up by a four-speed stick with a shift lever long enough to serve double duty as a pool cue.
That stick sits in a plain, low, grey carpeted tunnel in an otherwise parsimonious interior. Vinyl seats and lots of painted metal on the inside belie the Deluxe-ness promised of the badging, but it does look refreshingly simple and honest.
Everything else on the car, from lights to badging and brightwork, appears to be in fine shape, and even the rubber baby buggy bumpers on the front and rear chrome blades looks to have been refreshed.
The ad claims 4,000 miles since the restoration and that all parts put into the car are from Toyota as apposed to, say, Cuisinart or the Hustler Store. Along with the black-plate car it looks like your purchase would gain you a good bit of reading material as the seller is throwing in some Corona brochures and manuals.
To start your reading rainbow, and to call this Corona your own, you'd need to come up with $10,500. That's about four times what this Toyota cost new, and you now need to determine if its price is nice.
What do you think about this restored Corona for $10,500, is that a deal? Or, is that a price not even Murilee could love?
You decide!
San Francisco Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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For $10,500, Is This A Corona Boner-All-Us?