Street-Spotted: European Toyota Corolla Wagon

From Autoweek

A Toyota Corolla from the late 1990s on the streets today probably won't surprise anyone... unless it's the station wagon kind, which wasn't even sold here for the generation that debuted for the 1998 model year. That's right: The eighth-generation Corolla was only sold in the U.S. in sedan form, and built at the NUMMI plant in California in addition to a plant in Ontario, Canada. But that sedan model was specific to the North American market. Elsewhere in the world, the eighth-gen Corolla was very different, especially from the front, and was offered as a three-door hatchback, a five-door liftback and a five-door station wagon. Which is what we spotted here.

If the styling of this wagon reminds you of something, it's perhaps the Corolla All-Trac, offered from 1988 till 1992, except with much boxier exterior styling. The European-market Corolla, which debuted on the continent in 1997, seemingly borrowed the vertical taillight look and the tall roof design from its predecessor, offering a roomy interior and plenty of cargo space. What's more, the engine lineup was far more varied than in the U.S., which received the Corolla sedan solely with a 1.8-liter inline-four. The global market Corolla, on the other hand, had everything from a 1.3-liter gas engine to a 2.0-liter diesel.

But if from the back this Corolla wagon masquerades easily in traffic, to the point that you may not even spot it immediately, from the front the European Corolla was very different, wearing round headlights set quite far toward the center of the front fascia, in addition to round side markers. From afar, it could even be confused for the second-generation Subaru Impreza.

What's this European-market Corolla doing here, you're probably wondering by now. It's on diplomatic plates of course, and belongs to a foreign embassy staffer. Otherwise, it wouldn't be eligible for import because it's not 25 years or older. So you still can't really register one of these here, if you somehow bought one.

In a way, it's surprising that the U.S.did not receive a wagon version of the Corolla, because the segment still had quite a few players even if it was rapidly running out of steam. Even the Mercury Tracer station wagon was still in production at this time, and Mitsubishi offered a wagon version of the Diamante, lest we forget. Far more exotic station wagons were offered by other brands in the U.S. at the start of the decade, including the Peugeot 405. Even Daewoo offered a station wagon around this time — the Nubira — even though hardly anyone seemed to buy it. A little higher up in the price range, Volvo offered the V40 station wagon on a platform shared with the Mitsubishi Carisma in Europe, and Subaru seemed to make a big chunk of its money through wagon sales at that point.

So there seemed to be some demand for small and not particularly pricey station wagons in the second half of the decade, even though wagons had lost a substantial percentage of market share to SUVs. But small wagons were certainly on their way out. Perhaps the demand for the Corolla wagon had dried up in the U.S. with the previous generation, in Toyota's eyes.