My sweet sweet wife purchased a Tercel for $500 cash when she started college back in 2000. It faithfully provided her with 5 years of breakdown free college transportation and when we got married in 2005 it was decided that this car had earned a place in our household forever, or until it fell apart, whichever came first. It lasted until 2011 and the only money we put into was the occasional oil change or tune up.
This car was the definition of dependable. There were no creature comforts(at all) but it would get you from A to B without a doubt.
It didn’t take long to discover that it was a brilliant mountain car. We could pack up camping supplies, canoes, backpacking gear mountain bikes and whatever else, drive it into the wilderness/trailhead and leave it for weeks, with full assurance that no one will try to break into it.
Somewhere along the line, it picked up the nickname "Turdcel"
It wasn't us, and I don't even remember who it was that came up with the name. This was passionately rejected by my sweet sweet wife at first, but eventually it stuck and became spoken as a pet name but not out of any disgust for that fine machine.
I'm not really even sure what prompted the name, but it could have something to do with the seat covers that kind of resembled a dead bear that had been decaying for some time.
Yeah, friends poked fun, but they would rub those same seatcovers for good luck before any mountain bike ride.
The defrost didn’t work so if there was any temperature difference between out and in, you couldn’t see out the windows without much furious wiping.
The 0 to 60 time was nonexistent if there were more than 2 people because it topped out at about 57. That was ok though because on trips, it's all about the journey.
Empty it could get above 60, after about 6 minutes.
People who saw us in it gave us sympathtic looks and true story - after a week in the mountains we stopped at a gas station and a sweet old lady offered us a ten dollar bill
Every time we struck out on a trip, it always felt like it did when we were first dating and had absolutely no money but lots of excitement about our future together. The radio only played one station (country of course) but it was ok, because the cabin noise was so loud, you couldn’t hear anything anyway after you hit about 40 miles an hour.
And now, some pictures