The Corolla nightmare
(5/93 - 6/96)
Now this was a funny vehicle. I bought it two months before I got my license. The Corolla was a rather good buy. It had been previously used in burglary but then confiscated by the police. (Maybe thats why all those police cars kept on following me on the first year I had it...) After the police incident the car was a wreck. The engine would soon blow up, none of the locks, exept in the drivers door was functioning, it needed a paintjob, badly worn out tires... The police sold the car to a nearby car dealer (in order to get some money to pay for the damage its previous owners had made) which repaired it and fitted the engine with a smaller cylinder head. (they didnīt have the right one at that time.) My father bought the car and gave it to me as my 18th birthday present. Now this was a teenagers dream come true. I had my own car! The Corolla was soon fitted with a radio and loudspeakers which made it even more comfortable. It needed a complete cleaning from the inside. A wunderbaum (pinacolada!) was installed to "clean" the air from terrible tobacco smell. The damn thing even had a sunroof which made it even more cool in summertime. In winter it had a thick 5 mm ice on it, in the inside.
So the car had a 1300cc engine with a 1100cc cylinder head. That made it, how could I put this, a bit lazy. There really was no need to burn rubber, because you just couldnīt do it anyways even if you wanted to. It was all just happy cruising. It really didnīt bother me in the city but on a highway it did. I had real trouble overtaking anyone. And if someone was in the car besides me... well you can figure it out by yourself. You can imagine the pain with four extra people on board in a long trip :)
Warp 9 mr. Sulu.
This ītopspeedī test was made on a highway between Helsinki and Hämeenlinna in around five years ago. Our average speed on that 100km strip was around 120km/h. The results: a broken distributor and a fuel consumption of over 20 l/100km. When we reached 130km/h (according the speedometer) the wind started to come inside. All that whistling, cool. Then the sunroof tried to escape. My friend succesfully grabbed a hold of it and kept it on place until the test was completed.
The windows also tried to leave but not so dramatically. The funniest part of the test was yet to come. The overtaking of a brand new Volvo 460! Inch by inch, meter after meter... we crawled along side it and finally... finally accomplished this courageous act of heroism that no-one would of believed. The children in the backseat of the Volvo happily waved to us when it quickly accelerated and vanished to the bright sunlight.
The Corolla saw a lot of road. Many times I wondered why it just wouldnīt broke down totally but it remained a mystery.
This car had a spirit of its own. Many times, after perfect running, it just wouldnīt start after I had taunted it. Even over great distances it could hear your bad words about it.
But there was one thing that made this car exellent. Its cold start ablilities. Even when it had been unused for a week in a temperature of -34 degrees celsius, it started up rather happily. (well, it did overboil a few moments later but thatīs another story.)
