The grey Corolla was my mom’s car. She bought it brand new in 1988. At the time, my dad still had a giant white Dodge from the 70s.
My mom needed the grey Corolla for two main reasons:
One car was no longer enough, because my dad’s work hours did not match up with hers, nor did they match up with my school hours. So we became the classic two-car American family.
Chilton’s Toyota Corolla 1988-1997 Repair Manual is a book that I wish I owned. 
I currently use the Internet as my main source for car repair info. My father is my secondary source, of course. Whenever he comes to visit, we take a look under the hood of my green Corolla.
One day I’ll buy that Toyota Corolla repair manual, though, and then I’ll become the expert of the family.
One tip for Toyota Corolla owners: if you get rust spots, fix them ASAP before they get worse.
My green Corolla has a rust spot right above the left rear tire. I didn’t get a chance to fix it for awhile, and the rust spot got bigger. It seems that rust is one of those problems that you can’t solve easily once it gets bad. Rust damage seems to be irreversible in many cases.
I was graduating from college, and I realized that I would need a car.
So I started to search for one. I checked the classified ads, both in print and online. I searched every used car website possible. All that mattered was that the car cost $3000 or less, and that it was a reliable car.
I didn’t know much about cars. All I really knew was that my parents loved Toyota Corollas, and that Japanese cars were supposedly quite reliable. So these were my basic criteria as I looked for a car.
I responded to a few used car ads and made appointments to see the cars. But I still felt uneasy about the whole situation.
Corolla joy is the joy that a person receives from owning a Toyota Corolla.
It doesn’t matter how you spell it. (I have been known to spell Corolla as “Corrola”, “Corrolla”, and sometimes even “Corola”, forgive me.) As long as you love the car, that is Corolla joy.
Sometimes we can’t stop talking about how much we love our little green Corolla. We list all the reasons that we love it, as if we were in an advertisement. To an outsider, we might sound crazy. Well, that is Corolla joy.
This site is about my heartfelt love for the Toyota Corolla. I was raised in a Toyota Corolla family, and now that I’ve grown up (mostly), I have a Corolla of my own.
There were three Corollas in my life. The Grey Corolla was the one that my parents bought in 1988, which is no longer around. The Blue Corolla is the one that my parents bought in 1990, which they still own. The Green Corolla is the one that I bought in 2004, which I drive around, and which I love. It’s a 1994 model, but it feels like a brand new car.
