Obviously, some Bay Area fifth-generation Corona owner had been waiting for just such a parts bonanza to show up in a local U-Wrench yard, and this person yanked much of the good stuff from this RT118 wagon before I got there. I’ve done the same thing to a junkyard ’41 Plymouth, so I know the glory of such a discovery.
The engine and transmission no longer reside in this car, but it started life with an 18R-C 2.0-liter four-cylinder rated at 97 horsepower and a four- or five-speed manual gearbox. The 18R evolved into the legendary 20R and 22R of Toyota War fame.
The list price on this car was $3,129, or about $17,250 in 2019 dollars. The 1974 Ford Pinto wagon cost $2,771, but had just 86 horsepower and a more primitive interior than the semi-luxurious Corona wagon.
One of the final owners of this car plastered much of the interior with stickers (and, maybe, applied the rattle-can blue paint job over the car’s original yellow paint).
We can assume this car was not babied during its final years.
With a five-digit odometer, we can’t know how many miles this car ended up turning during its 45 years of life. The 18R engine and Coronas in general tended to hold together better than just about any car of the era (other than a diesel Mercedes-Benz), so this could be a 469,325-mile car.
