Trusty Corolla is still a jewel
SOUGHT-AFTER: OWNER DAVE WAS CHASED THROUGH THE STREETS BY A PROSPECTIVE BUYER
Back in 1985, the Sprinter was voted Car-of-the-Year.
Dave Berkowitz loves his car. There is no other way to put it. He has owned his white Toyota Sprinter Twincam 16 since 1985, when he drove it off the floor of Killarney Toyota in Johannesburg.
It’s done 286 000km now and the 1.6 litre engine has never been opened. It’s never let him or his wife Evelyn down.
Dave offers a bit of a rueful smile: you can see he will admit he has let the car down a bit himself because, as he puts it, “It could do with a little TLC…”
He adds: “It does need a good clean and polish, but, you know how it is as you get on in years …”
Dave’s just about to turn 80 … and he recalls he didn’t always drive the Toyota like the pensioner he is now.
There’s a roguish chuckle: “You know that, when this car came out, it was one of the few which had a speedo marked to 240km/h… Well, I had it up to 210km/h down in the Lowveld once.”
The TwinCam 16 Corolla, which won the South African Car-of-theYear accolade in 1985, was the quickest car in its class in those days and its twin cam, 16-valve engine (also used in the MR2 sports car and a few other fast Toyotas) was a rarity.
A jewel of a powerplant, it loved to rev. Even today, with all the advances in engine technology, there are few standard cars which will rev over 8 000rpm. The Corolla’s rev counter is a thing for petrolheads to behold: its red zone only starts at 7 700rpm and the dial is marked all the way up to 9 000rpm. Most cars run out of puff at 6 000rpm.
Yet, oddly enough, Dave says he was never a petrolhead and never bought the car for its performance.
He recalls how he and some friends had been trying to revive the Balfour cricket club in Johannesburg in the early 1980s and they were given a cheque for R40 000 (a fortune in those days) as sponsorship from Killarney Toyota.
“So a year or two later, when I was looking to get a new car – a second family car really, I thought: let me return the favour.
“When I got there, they recommended this TwinCam16 Corolla Sprinter as being the best in the Toyota range … and there were only about 12 of them in the country at the stage, they told me.”
For most of its life, the trusty Corolla was the second car after various big BMWs and Mercs … ironic considering it is now probably a collector’s item and worth more than the Number One cars in the Berkowitz garage back in the day.
The value of the car was brought home to him a couple of years ago, when he was chased through the streets of Nelspruit by a man wanting to buy it.
“He started off at R30 000 and went up and up until, by the time we pulled over at a shopping centre he was offering R85 000!”
Dave turned him down: “It sounds like a lot of money, but, honestly, where am I going to get something decent for R85 000?”
He thinks: “No, this car is all I need and all I want. And it will last me a good few years yet – that’s why I love it…”