Both cars are having problems with the instrumentation and the twin clutch transmissions. I agree that the Fusion is a pleasant car to drive but I would not want to own one.
I had a friend with a 70’s era toyota, remembering speeding downhill to be able to make it up the next hill. And if you needed to stop fast turn on the ac!
Tires and wheels can have a heavy spot. Thats what that little colored dot is on tires on new cars. They mount the heavy tire spot opposite the heavy wheel spot before balancing. I still remember seeing the old Toyotas with their fenders flapping in the breeze on the freeway. Quality indeed.
The 1970 Toyota Corolla didn’t impress my parents at all. Mom ended up buying a Datsun 510 Wagon because the toyota wasn’t nearly as well designed and built. For us it would be a tie between the 1973 Volvo 144 and the 1988 Grand Voyager V6 both were problem children but the Volvo cost us $200 just about every month and we only paid $550 or so for it (shipping cost from Hawaii where the grandparents had it and gave it to us) Sold it after 2 frustrating years to buy the Grand Voyager which started out ok but by the mid 90’s we had a rebuilt transmission as well as a long list of other repairs. Put our AAA towing coverage to work on many occasions.
Toyota built very good rear drive cars in the 60s such as the Corona and the Crown. When they launched the Corolla, not enough testing was done and it had numerous porblems. I worked with a guy who had owned Beetles and his Corolla blew head gaskets, burned valves and had other problems. He swore he would never buy another one.
The Datsun 510 was a neat car, sort of like a poor man’s BMW. However, they were rust buckets and the bodies caved in long before the mechanicals gave out. In Arizona it was probably a great little car!
My dad was an “early adopter” Toyota owner (don’t know the year, but must have been early- or mid-70s).
He had to get rid of it, less than 5 years later, due to extreme structural rusting. He later told me you could sit there and watch it go. Seems Toyota didn’t appreciate rust-belt winters and the effects of road salt.
Yeah, the southwest was kind to some of those early Japanese cars
I still see some of those Datsun 510s . . . and those Corollas from the early 70s
I noticed the 20somethings seem to think those cars are cool . . . they like to get them looking good, then put a more powerful motor under the hood, lower them, add a loud exhaust, then mount a set of fat rims and tires . . .
I never owned one but back in the 80s had to work on them a lot as they sold in droves around here. That was the Subaru 1400 with the wet sleeve engines; an abomination IMO. They ran and drove well, but…
A building full of engineers thought it would be a good idea to have removeable cylinder liners resting on copper gaskets with the liners protruding above the block by about .005 of an inch.
It was recommended, and necessary, that the head bolts be retorqued every 15k miles.
Copper is a soft material so eventually the liners would depress due to torque and the head gaskets would let go. Slightest bit of change in the wind direction, turmoil in the Middle East, or even a hint of overheating and the gaskets would surrender.
I used to do 2 or 3 of those things a week.
@VDCdriver …re: late 70’s VW Rabbit seats, interesting comment. I’ve never seen seats degrade w/use like that either. The seats on my 40+ year old Ford truck remain in practically original condition. Some fabric color fading, but no signs of seat break down at all. Likewise with my 20+ year old Corolla, seats, even the driver’s seat, remain comfortable, offer good support, and in good condition.
Edit to add this …
re: early Toyotas and Hondas … My high school friend had a 71, the ignition key got twisted at a 90 degree angle by a gas attendant using the wrong key to open the gas-cap. My friend simply twisted it back. No pliers needed, the key was such weak piece of metal you could twist it just with your fingers. I think those cars still were pretty reliable, just how the body hardware and the like was put together , well, let’s say it was done frugally. On the plus side, they were quite inexpensive to purchase.
Actually the '70 510 Wagon held up very well over the 21 years it was on the road, don’t really remember more than a little rust on the car. The 60’s dodge pickup that dad used to build the house in the mid 70’s had rusty floors (but at only $300 for a running truck what do you expect?)
The ignition lock cylinder on the 510 was so worn that my brother’s keys slid out of the ignition while he was driving it to school. Had to find them on the floor just to shut the car off.
Mine was a Datsun 510, I forget which year, maybe 70’s. It said 39,000 miles but must have been off by hundreds of thousands.
I spent at least a penny on repairs for every penny spent on gas. And, it wasn’t maintenance items. Things like a switch down inside the a/c which mandated a complete tear down of the a/c to fix.
cigroller, I had a 1990 Oldsmobile Silhouette, and it was one of the most reliable vehicles I’ve owned. I geniunely liked it. Never gave me any problems. From 1992 through 1999, it carried me and my growing family all over the midwest with no problems whatsoever. Go figure. That big windshield provided excellent vision, but boy was it tough to scrape ice off of! The only reason I sold it was because my sons were growing up, striking out on their own, and I just didn’t need all that space anymore.
The biggest lemon I’ve ever owned was a 1978 Mercury Monarch that I bought in a fit of insanity. I don’t know what made me do it, and that car was the biggest POS Ford ever made. After one engine, and multiple other issues I finally sold it. So, was I smart enough to sell it to someone I didn’t know. Heck no! I continued the insanity by selling it to my brother! So, guess who got to work on it for another 6 months??? After about the 4th starter,(between the two of us) I told my brother I wasn’t going to touch that heap from hell ever again, that he was on his own. A week later he sold it. A couple of months after that, he told me the new owner, a co-worker asked him “your brother knows that car pretty well. Think he’d be willing to put new brake lines in it?” My brother, correctly, told him that I never wanted to lay eyes on it again.
I had a 1978 Ford Granada that was actually a pretty reliable car in spite of being bland and the vinyl seats being prone to stitches ripping out. The big problem when I got the car was that it had no A/C; somewhat of a necessity in OK. The car was arrow straight, ran well, burned no oil, and I gave a whopping 150 bucks for it.
After rummaging through my pile o’parts I made an A/C unit by using a homemade bracket and Subaru air compressor, a condenser from a Nissan pickup, hoses from who knows what, a Subaru elec. condenser fan, and an underdash evaporator unit from a mid 60s Ford Falcon. Total cost about 30 bucks with 20 of that for the evaporator, done in an afternoon, and it worked great.
When I sold the car four years later I yanked the underdash evaporator out and sold that on eBay a few years after that. Someone in NM bought the evaporator for 175 dollars. Go figure.
@ok4450, so how did you get a belt to run that compressor? Did you go to your local Napa and ask for a compressor belt for a 1965 through 78 SubaNissaFord GranFalcon?
A dealer I used to work for got out of the Subaru business and had a back room full of misc parts they said I could have so I lugged it home and stashed it all in the basement. There were 40 or 50 NOS V-belts that fit who knows what. I just rummaged through the pile of belts until I found something close and called it good.
The Granada was daily transportation and cheap anyway. The only real problem I had with it was the random vapor locking on very hot days. That was solved by replacing the steel fuel line with rubber and adding a 1/4" thick insulator block between the carburetor and intake manifold flange.
Those old enough may remember back in the 70s and 80s when several manufacturers went on a Benz comparison kick and Ford was no exception.
There was a lame TV commercial back then that showed high rollers at a country club being given the wrong car by a valet one evening when he confused the Granada with a Mercedes… 
Real stretch there…
Well don’t forget the Versailles, or as I called them the Lincolnada.
I remember that commercial. A real BIIIIIG stretch
Reminds me of that Johnny Cash song “One Piece at a Time”…
Mine was a Datsun 510
My wife owned a 1980 Datsun 510. Mechanically it was EXCELLENT. Had the NAPS-Z engine. But it was rusting apart after 6 years.