Many years ago, I went on a vacation trip to Maine with a friend, in his fairly-new Tercel.
Unfortunately, he didn’t tell me beforehand that the A/C was inoperative.
After driving for about 3 hours at high speed–with the vent fan on the high setting and with the windows wide open–I realized that the back of my shirt was totally soaked with perspiration, and my shorts were fast becoming…very moist.
I fail to see how anyone can claim that old cars w/o A/C were comfortable in the summer. I realize that this may come down to a personal preference, but I felt absolutely fatigued after riding in that car for ~7 hours w/o A/C, and that was during a drive from NJ to Maine. I can’t even begin to imagine what it would have been like in The South!
Believe it or not some people can stand it(I cant anymore) and the highway enviroment makes it worse,one relic I’ve been driving lately has a 12 volt fan on the dash to recirculate the heated air in the cab(a convection oven gets pretty hot) been thinking about reporting a broken window glass,when I snatch the fan off the dash and hurl it out the window.AC is like Health Insurance it should be mandatory (not Obamacare) been thinking about going to Cuba to get some medical issues addressed(and why do we still have a trade embargo with Cuba? like to smuggle a shipping Con-Ex down there full of ignition and fuel system parts for older presmog vehicles-Kevin(Hate me if you must)
The trade embargo with Cuba was always more symbolic than real. Castro, if he had the money, could buy stuff from any number of countries.
The fact that communism was an unmitigated economic distaster is not the fault of the USA or any other country. The only thing they had done well is train doctors and nurses, but with no money for medical supplies, even that was not a success. After the Russian quit subsidizing the economy, tourism, run mostly by Canadians and the Spainish has been the major source of foreign exchange. But that alone cannot make a country prosperous.
Exports like rum and cigars don’t pay the bills either.
I fail to see how anyone can claim that old cars w/o A/C were comfortable in the summer.
There’s a young woman that works for me. She’s 5’2 and weighs no more then 100lbs. If the temp is anything under 90 she’s complaining. Always wears a sweater in the office because she’s cold. Never goes outside without a jacket. She’s NEVER used the AC in any vehicle she owned. Too cold. Got divorced a year ago…Her hubby was a big guy (6’2…280). I wouldn’t be surprised if they got divorced because they couldn’t come to an agreement on what the house temp should be at.
I use to own cars without AC. Never even drove in a car with AC until I was an adult. I’ll NEVER live without it again. I have central AC in my house.
I always kept a cooler full of Coke on ice handy when I went on drives. I don’t know if “comfortable” was an accurate description, but I survived.
I never had a car with A/C until the mid '80s… and I’m not even certain that one had A/C. It was the family buggy and my daily drive was a pickup without A/C. The mid '90s might be more accurate.
the side window vents make all the difference in comfort, and they are only comfortable in rural driving. in traffic…, you sweat like a “stuck pig”. it also depended on the vehicle. some where like a wind tunnel, some… a sauna. @kmccune, I agree the sun is hotter, I have sun poisoning on my ear right now after camping. in april? crazy! it only got to the 70’s one or two days! I grew up as a pool rat and never got burnt like this
My wife’s car has A/C, but she hardly ever uses it. When we lived in Malaysia, average peak daytime temp up to 35C (about 95F) she would actually use the air in our Proton Waja. Even the cheapest cars there have air. She used to bowl with the American Society there and walked one hour to the bowling alley with a bowling ball in her backpack!
We’re still married after 47 years but have an elaborate temperature arrangement to suit us both.
@VDCdriver
My son in law had a Terkel ( that’s what we called it). He had to turn off the air to make it up long hills. Toyota prides themselves on making some of the worse subcoacts known…Tercel, Echo, Yaris…keep changing the name so you might forget how bad the were. They are reincarnates of very old compacts with all the bad and none of the good.
I don’t know why the Cuban thing either and its illegal to go there unless you go through Canada. I don’t think we care about communists anymore though. In Minnesota the Legislature is changing the name of Asian Carp to Invasive Carp to not be offensive. They didn’t say anything about changing the name of Norway Rats. In Minneapolis they changed the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day, of course that is only one point in time and didn’t seem to care what happened 1000 years in Minnesota before Columbus. I hope all the cities named Columbus won’t have to change their names though. Wow.
All I can say is that my '76 Corolla was a huge, enormous, giant, quantum leap in quality over the '72 Vega that I replaced with it. I was truly shocked at the total and uncomplaining reliability of the Corolla. I thought constantly having to fix something or bring the car in for a recall or warranty work, as I had to do with my Vega, was normal. My Corolla made me realize that it wasn’t. The Corolla body panels didn’t rot like the Vega either, and the door didn’t have to be lifted up to close due to worn hinges after 4 years. And, unlike the Vega, the rear axle never separated from the differential gear case and slide out of the axle housing.
I don’t know or care much about the Vega, but my 74 Cutlass was really pretty much trouble free. I remember I needed a transmission overhaul and the dealer appologized saying they were sorry the transmission needed to be rebuilt at 80,000 at was on the odometer. I said don’t worry about it, thats 180,000. Its already spun around once. That was before the extra digit so you got a new car every 100,000 miles. Now you have to go over a million miles before it sets back to zero.
The Corolla body panels didn't rot like the Vega either, and the door didn't have to be lifted up to close due to worn hinges after 4 years.
GM - wanting to make the Vega cheap…decided to use really thin metal. So thin that the wagon prototype broke in half when testing.
While I agree the Vega did rust out earlier then the Corolla - however the Corolla rusted far far faster then the Chevy Malibu (or any other mid-size American made vehicle of that era). Can’t say much for their reliability though.
The Malibu was a nice car. As was Bing’s Olds. I should point out, however, that the Vega was GM’s competitor to the Corolla. Apples to apples, if you will.
I just got tired of reading the Toyota-bashing so I thought I’d respond. All makes have produced good vehicles and bad vehicles. Some of my favorite GMs are the Olds 442, the '70 Camaro, Chevy Novas, early '70s Trans Ams, early 'Vettes (C2 through C4), and the '76 Cadillac Eldorado Barritz (sp?). Impalas of '59 and '60 (the “flat wings”) are cool too.
Let me add, that I had several Corollas and found then excellent cars. Once they dropped below that, for some reason, they seemed dreadful to me. If they just cut a foot off the Corolla, they might be pretty good .
@TSM,would really like to have1960 chevy convertible with perhaps a strong 301 in it always thought that was a cool looking car@wesw,when I was young the only time it was real hot around here was on the fourth of July,now there seems to be a lot of hot weather and strong UV-Kevin
They did drop a foot off of the Corolla… and they called it the Tercel. As a very basic, very inexpensive mode of transportation it was really pretty reliable… but “good” might be stretching the compliment. It was as raw as you can get. Great college car.
Really enjoyable diverse thread. On the subject of air my 20 year old Suburban quit chilling years ago and it wasn’t an issue until I found myself stuck in traffic on the 401in July. Fatigue behind the wheel grows exponentially when you are suffering from heat prostration. Not to mention the adhesion problems compounded by shorts and leather seats. As I have to move one of my progeny to Ottawa this summer (minimal six hours one way) I am considering resurrecting the AC despite what I know are pretty much unarguable economics against a repair costing probably a third the value of the truck.
@same
We had several Corollas and my son in law had a Terkel ( changing the c to k which is a habit now). It was narrower, had a smaller motor, smaller tires, with a really lame interior cluster, the cheapest of cheap upholstery, terrible seats and seating and absolutely ( or near) no sound insulation. The gearing was strictly for around town and any thing over 50 the motor screamed for mercy. It was peppy up to 20 mph. No Toyota cornered well, this thing with it’s ultra small tires squirmed at the slightest provocation.
Every year I try out a “new and improved” Yaris. They stink too with the same relative differences between that and the Corolla. The slight difference in price between a base Corolla and a Yaris just isn’t worth it. They are made for European citIes. They seem to love them there ??.?
If it were indeed a Corolla chopped off, would have one in a heart beat. The 1.8 in the Corolla is a great motor. That it’s reliable is a curse for those who own them IMHO. Our entire family loved our Corollas. My daughter insisted that my son in law dump the Terkel the first year they were married…still felt unsafe in it.
@MikeInNH
That is one thing I found true with early Corollas, Civics and Mazdas that we owned. In their quest of higher mileage, the early ones had terribly thin metal. I found you had to stay right on top of them to keep them from rusting through, even from scratches on the paint. My favorite winter trick with all those older cars if they got a scratch in the winter, was to smear grease over it before it rusted till spring. Our Corollas with thin paint and metal had lots of smears on them.
I have to plead guilty to being a care-taking fanatic. I always carry a tube of touch up paint, and any scratch gets touched up immediately… before I even get home. The moment I see it I clean it and touch it up. I even touch up scratches on the underside, but I use a spray can there.
I’ve cared for all my cars that way, except for the '61 Beetle. And perhaps my '64 Fairlane. I was young then.
The Tercels are, I agree, as basic (read: cheap & cheesy) as a car can get… perhaps just a step above my '61 Beetle. But they keep putting along for years. It’s like having a pair of plastic sneakers that never allows your feet to breath but lasts for years on end. Sort of like a polyester suit; a cheap used-car-salesman look forever.
Today I “bit the bullet” and brought my box of new front strut parts into a shop to have them installed. The college I retired from couldn’t squeeze it in before semester’s end, and I can no longer physically handle a 178 ft/lb torque requirement lying on the driveway… which probably would have had a “breakaway torque” in excess of my impact wrench’s 250 ft/lb capacity. They’ve been on there for years. I have to add that the tech came out after the work and let me know that the underside was in excellent shape, with no rot and no surface rust except on nuts & bolts, things that are installed with little rust protection. He commented that even the nuts holding the strut assembly to the steering knuckle came right off with no problem. Of course, my having provided all the new parts (struts, upper and lower spring bushings, bump-stops, dust washers, new upper mounts, etc.) along with exploded view drawings from the Toyota manuals with the torque values highlighted probably was interpreted as my being invested in the job more than the average person. Yeah, I was ready to go and I chickened out. I don’t want to screw my back up yet again. He was a master tech and knew what he was doing (I watched for about 20 minutes), and he fortunately didn’t take my parts provision as a lack of confidence in his work. We chatted for about 15 minutes… but since they were charging me the “book time” rather than actual time it was on “my dime” anyway.
Unfortunately, the trucks on their frames of a few year back were not as rust averse. That recall they had still amazes me. I’d never heard of a company replacing entire trucks’ frames under recall. Tearing a truck down to a bare frame and rebuilding it on a new frame is a lot of work. Oddly, the frame and body on my '79 rotted out but the frame and body on my '89, both Toyota pickups, resisted rust phenomenally. Then they apparently dropped the ball again on a later model.
Sorry to go on & on. It’s late here on the East Coast. Thanks for listening.