Yahoo Autos 1985 Toyota Camry with 648k Miles Is Junkyard Treasure in California
The Murilee Martin Junkyard Odometer Standings were dominated by Honda and Mercedes-Benz for years, but extremely well-traveled Toyotas have been muscling in lately. A couple of months back, a 1996 Avalon with close to a million miles on its odometer took the No.1 spot, and today's Junkyard Treasure just grabbed second place for the car company founded by Kiichiro Toyoda.
That's right, the final odometer reading is 648,928 miles on this 1985 Camry sedan, which I found in a car graveyard near Monterey, California. That shoves aside a 1990 Volvo 244 with 631,999 miles, which had spent quite a while as Numero Uno among the well-traveled vehicles I've found during my junkyard travels and still seemed to have a solid hold on the second-place spot.
Let's take a look at the current Murilee Martin Junkyard Odometer Standings, which as recently as last fall contained no Toyotas in the Top Ten. Things have changed!
1999 Toyota Avalon: 949,863 miles
1985 Toyota Camry: 648,928 miles
1990 Volvo 240: 631,999 miles
1988 Honda Accord: 626,476 miles
1987 Mercedes-Benz 190E: 601,173 miles
1996 Toyota Camry wagon: 583,624 miles
1981 Mercedes-Benz 300 SD: 572,129 miles
1985 Mercedes-Benz 300 SD: 535,971 miles
1988 Honda Accord: 513,519 miles
1990 Volvo 740 Turbo wagon: 493,549 miles
That's three Toyotas, three Mercedes-Benzes, and two apiece for Honda and Volvo.
The first generation of Camry sold in the United States appeared late in the 1983 model year and was sold through 1986. It was available as a four-door sedan or five-door liftback. Prior to now, I'd found a couple of discarded first-generation Camrys with better than 300,000 miles on their odometers but none that had cracked the 400,000-mile mark.
This was a small car by 2020s sedan standards, much smaller than even the current Corolla and scaling in at about the same weight as the final Yarises sold here. The bigger next-generation Camry that hit American showrooms as a 1987 model was a much more fearsome rival for the Honda Accord and Ford Taurus.
The engine is a 2S-E SOHC straight-four rated at 92 hp and 113 lb-ft of torque.
The base transmission was a five-speed manual, and that's what we have here.
You need a car with good build quality to get better than 300,000 miles, and Toyota certainly provides that. Even more important, though, is regular maintenance. Check out this sticker showing that the timing belt was replaced in the summer of 2020, with 625,000 miles on the clock. We can assume that the owner peeled off each previous such sticker every time a new belt went in.
The interior looks very nice, which tends to be the case with the extreme high-mile cars I find in junkyards. Maybe the seats were swapped in from a lower-mile Camry… in fact, this might be the third or fourth set of seats to live in this car.
Why isn't it still on the road? I plugged its VIN into the California smog check history search page and found that it failed the Golden State's stringent emissions test in February after decades of breezing through the biennial ordeal.
Perhaps the car's owner faced thousands of dollars in repairs to maybe get the car's exhaust clean enough and decided to trade it in on a new Camry (after which the car would have gone straight to Pick-n-Pull, because nobody is going to buy a used 40-year-old sedan with too many pedals and far too many miles). We just can't know.
The first-generation Camry was sold in the United States for the 1983 through 1986 model years.
It was available in sedan and liftback form.
If you're being very strict about Camry generations, there was a Celica Camry sold in Japan during the early 1980s that is the official first-generation Camry.
At the time of this writing, this is the second-best-traveled junkyard car I've ever found. Numero Uno is another Toyota, with close to a million miles on its odometer.
It also has the highest odometer reading of any Japan-built car I've found in a junkyard, beating out a 626k-mile Honda Accord (the 950k-mile Avalon was built in Kentucky).
How many clutches did it go through during its life? I'm going to guess that it was on its third when it arrived here.
The blue velour interior is still in good shape. This is typical of high-mile cars I find, because people who keep their vehicles alive this long tend to take good care of them.
Is this a Satanic reference or a not-quite-reached mileage target of 666,000 miles?
1985 Toyota Camry in California wrecking yard.
1985 Toyota Camry in California wrecking yard.
1985 Toyota Camry in California wrecking yard.
1985 Toyota Camry in California wrecking yard.
1985 Toyota Camry in California wrecking yard.
1985 Toyota Camry in California wrecking yard.
1985 Toyota Camry in California wrecking yard.
1985 Toyota Camry in California wrecking yard.
1985 Toyota Camry in California wrecking yard.
1985 Toyota Camry in California wrecking yard.
1985 Toyota Camry in California wrecking yard.
1985 Toyota Camry in California wrecking yard.
1985 Toyota Camry in California wrecking yard.
1985 Toyota Camry in California wrecking yard.
