It’s funny how cars once ubiquitous disappear almost overnight. My second car, a 1977 Toyota Corolla liftback, used to be seen in their many thousands, but I haven’t seen a mid-seventies Toyota of any stripe recently–and it’s been years since I’ve seen a liftback.

I may have a photo of it somewhere, maybe a Polaroid, but I’ll be darned if I can find it. Just imagine the car in the ad with white-letter tires, fake wire wheels, a bright yellow paint job, and rear-window louvers. Nice, eh? (In other words, a typical high-schooler’s car.)

Looking at the ad, it’s hard to believe I’ve owned something which got such decent gas mileage. My Midget did better but your typical MGB doesn’t even come close to the city figure, let alone the highway miles per gallon. What a novelty. But “SR5″ specification aside, it was a pretty basic car, with a small engine, and no air conditioning or other energy-sapping accessories to run.

I liked the car at the time, and certainly did my best to do it in, though the car was resilient. It had 75,000 on it when purchased and 175,000 on it when I sold it three years later. It needed a couple of clutches (learned to drive one in this car) and one valve job. But in the end I wanted an old British car, sold this to buy my 1970 Midget, and didn’t regret seeing it go.