Welcome to Craigslist Crapshoot, our weekly search for the most bizarre, awesome, and/or terrible vehicles that the online classifieds has to offer.
There’s this odd stereotype that young female librarians turn from dowdy to dyn-o-mite simply by removing their glasses and letting their hair down. I don’t know anything about that, but I do know that the Toyota Corolla, long considered the apartment refrigerator of the automotive world, does have some hot models in its past. Not only that but you dug up some of the coolest of the hot for sale last week. We’ll discuss those in a sec, but first this week’s quest.
Toyota may have eschewed the Corolla for the Prius as its focus, seeing as the hybrid has a family of models and the Corolla just a single lonely four-door to its name, but we still like the original sorts of hybrids—cars with American V8s were they might be least expected. Let’s see what we can find in cars that have had their engines replaced with good ol’ American iron. Price is no object, but the results will be judged on perceived value.
As always, we want your finds to go down in infamy and not in the site’s spam filter. Since we’ve changed commenting systems, you may need to update your commenter account. Make sure you have a Disqus account – they’re free and easy to get – and then comment away.
You know, there are certain older cars that have reached cool status simply by surviving. That’s certainly the case with the 1972 Carina Alff found on eBay. Horsepower counted in the double digits and a beige vinyl roof may not be considered cool by today’s standards, but on that blast from the past, they both just feel right. Somebody seemed to agree as that car sold for nearly seven grand.
Inliner noted that you didn’t have to set the Way-back machine that far to get a Corolla that was interesting, and found a 2005 Corolla XRS with a six-speed stick and a rev-happy DOHC four that it could be boasted Lotus found good enough for the Elise.
In the end however, the Corolla that I think was most noteworthy straddled both of those extremes. The 1980 Corolla Liftback located by GTXcellent looks to be in great shape and features styling that has really has stood the test of time. That’s one damn-fine looking automobile.
Congrats to GTXcellent, and thank you all for your also-excellent contributions. Now, let’s go looking for V8s in all the wrong places.
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