SA Road Tests

The following piece is just for fun, a change of pace from my usual reviews of new cars. It's about the 20-year-old Corolla I turn to when there are temporarily no test vehicles available.  

Touching twenty: 1998 Toyota Corolla 130 GLE (E-110)

Not for sale

Pics by author

Posted: 19 December 2017

The numbers
Engine: Toyota 2E-ELU, 1296 cc, SOHC belt driven, 12-valve, inline four
Power: 55 kW at 6200 rpm
Torque: 103 Nm at 4200 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: About 13.8 seconds
Maximum speed: 160 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: See text
Tank: 60 litres
Boot: 360 litres
Ground clearance: 150 mm
Turning circle: Between kerbs 9.6 m, between walls 10.4 m
Brakes: 243 mm solid discs, 200 mm drums
Suspension: McPherson struts with gas-filled shock absorbers, front and rear
Tare: 936 kg
GVM: 1450 kg


My personal car, a Toyota Corolla 130 GLE, is an anachronism. It’s not very powerful or even especially economical. But we're together and she isn’t for sale.

First registered on 15th January 1998, my Little Oriental Shopping Trolley (LOST) entered my life second-hand on 1st July 2000. Until then it had been a Toyota SA office car used, I suspect, as a gofer; running errands and ferrying personnel to and from the airport. I figured it for a good buy reasoning that, being a “factory” car, it would have been well looked after and serviced meticulously.

I picked it up from my local Toyota dealership with 55 000 km on the clock. Priced at R59 000, it represented a saving of roughly R15 000 over what it had cost new. The paint looked immaculate and everything appeared ship-shape but there were to be surprises in store.

It served as my daily driver until early 2008 when press cars took over my life. Since then it’s only used regularly for five to six weeks a year when the factories shut down for the holiday season and test vehicles are withdrawn for safekeeping.

Driving other people’s vehicles most of the time blurs one’s grasp on reality until certain “facts” become ingrained. I mean, every car has ABS brakes, airbags, electric windows and mirrors, power steering, all manner of electronic safety aids and wondrous connectivity, right? Well, no. Most didn’t twenty years ago. A few expensive cars boasted some of the up and coming modern conveniences but little Corollas and similar budget vehicles generally did without.

LOST is horrifyingly basic by today’s standards; it has no airbags at all although a single restraint was offered optionally overseas. Forget, also, about power steering; central locking; ABS brakes with or without EBA and EBD; ESP; automatic climate management; cruise control, adaptive or otherwise; powered windows and mirrors; a rev counter; height adjustment for the driver’s seat; reversing camera; a touch-screen infotainment centre or even Bluetooth.

That came bundled with a radio and CD-player combination I bought to replace the original cassette-tape machine when that technology went the way of the buggy whip. As for automatic locking on the move, follow-me lighting or auto-on lights and wipers, you jest, surely?

Do I miss all that stuff? Some, yes, but just a little. I miss power steering the most because low speed manoeuvering is difficult for the first couple of weeks until one gets accustomed to doing without.

My conscience says that airbags save lives but my practical voice objects that many users have also been seriously injured when bags deployed – and there’s the worrying thought that the world’s largest manufacturer of them sank into bankruptcy after multiple recalls resulting from unscheduled incidents.

As for ABS brakes with all the add-ons, I grew up in an age when youngsters were taught how to drive rather than to fudge their ways through the test. You overcome aquaplaning by braking in short, sharp jabs rather than by panicking. ESP becomes unnecessary if you drive sensibly. I cringe when drivers lurch around the sharpest corners at high speed and in top gear while trusting man-made electronics to shield them from the laws of physics.

Automatic climate control is nice but my car came with factory fitted air-conditioning that works 90-percent as effectively. Powered windows and mirrors are for the lazy but I do miss central locking. I also miss having a rev counter but it was one of the trade-offs one makes when buying any new, or new-to-us, car.

I accept that many drivers are shorter than I am, so they might regret not having an adjustable seat but that isn’t my problem in this particular car. There is more than enough headspace and my eyes are level with the centre of the windscreen – where they should be.

“Missing” gadgets, like reversing cameras, blind spot monitoring, lane keeping assistance and following distance control are de-necessitated by two simple, old-fashioned rules: look where you’re going and stay alert.

Oh yes, the surprises. From the beginning, the car tended to bottom out when crossing gutters with a third person on board. I thought they all did that and shrugged it off as one of Life’s little trials. After new dampers all around however, replacing the rubber bump stops and fitting new rear springs, the car was transformed. I should have done it earlier.

The other surprises included finding shards of glass under the carpets after a few months of ownership and bubbling paintwork on both left doors, that appeared years later. It was attributed by a local panel beater to shoddy surface preparation. I guess the mollycoddling expected of a factory owned car was actually a myth. We live and learn.

Thankfully, the Corolla has cost very little to run. In the course of a further 85 000 kilometres and almost eighteen years, I have used up one clutch assembly and two sets of tyres, replaced front brake discs and rear drums once each, visited the CV joint guy twice, replaced a section of front seat fabric, done up the suspension (see above) and the radiator’s top tank rusted through. Apart from the necessary repair and cleaning, the cylinder head obviously needed attention too. Beside that, ordinary servicing, including a precautionary new camshaft belt at 80 000 km, was all it needed.

The old 2-E motor (other markets enjoyed the 1331 cc, twin-cam, 16-valve 3-E by that time) isn’t particularly powerful or economical. It is carburettor-fed and variable valve timing was still new back then, so performance is not exactly exciting. But it gets the job done. Little pleasures include a slight power surge as the second stage of the carb kicks in at about half throttle and the way it picks up its skirts when the cam starts working hard at around 4000 rpm. Modern 1300s have nothing to fear from it, however.

Careful driving on long trips returns about 15 kilometres per litre while town use requires around 10. Thanks to decently sized windows all around and a fairly tight turning circle, it handles and parks easily while a roofline that doesn’t slope away to nothing means that those in the back can sit comfortably. The boot is very reasonable at 360 litres (See pic below) and split rear seat backs can be laid down to provide more volume. Runflats and space savers were still novelties back then, so the spare is fully sized.

Current book value is around R30 000 but a dealer told me I shouldn’t accept a cent less than R60 000. Current on-line asking prices for Corollas of this vintage seem to bear this out but, as I tell enquirers regularly, we're together and she isn’t for sale.

The alloy wheels are after-market accessories

The radio/CD player is also an after-market item. See text


As this clipping from a January, 2020 newspaper shows, the boots of Corollas like mine (this one belonged to a stock thief) can hold two small goats.