Toyota Corona Mark II LG (1973)
Publication: Car Graphic
Format: From Our Motoring Diaries
Date: November 1973
Author: “C/G Test Group” (uncredited)
Road testing the Toyota Corona Mark II LG
Even the C/G staff sometimes just want to relax and enjoy a cruise while listening to music. In this sense, American cars are ideal, with spacious interiors, good quality seats, a comfortable environment thanks to air conditioning, quiet and powerful engines combined with automatic transmission, and steering systems that requires no mental or physical effort thanks to power steering. If they also had good quality AM/FM radios, they would be perfect. The only Japanese cars that fit this criteria would be the luxurious saloons of the Laurel and Mark II classes, and among them, the Corona Mark II LG Automatic is one of the best for such purposes among domestic cars.
As the top-end model of the Mark II, introduced after the minor change in August of this year, the LG’s selling point is that it is the first domestically produced sedan with a six-cylinder engine to adopt an electronically controlled fuel injection system (although it is basically the same as the EFI available on the four-cylinder Mark II). This feature has become the car’s greatest merit. In particular, starting ability and operation at low temperatures have been dramatically improved. The engine wakes up immediately with a twist of the ignition key, regardless of the outside air temperature and internal water temperature, and settles into a stable idle without disturbances at 1000rpm when cold and 800rpm when warm.
Even if you immediately put the floor-mounted selector in “D” and drive away into crowded city traffic, the EFI-equipped six-cylinder responds to the driver’s will without any hesitation. This can be a little astonishing to those who are familar with the worst combination of the old auto choke and automatic transmission. In those days, unless you waited until the water temperature had risen sufficiently and the idle had settled down, you often had to endure the pain of the engine suddenly accelerating as soon as you put the selector into “D,” or the engine stalling every time you stopped at a traffic light (not to mention that auto chokes also start to malfunction after about the second year).
When I drove around town and consciously tried to rev up the engine (upshifts happen at very low rpm when driving normally in D, so there is rarely a chance to rev it up), I noticed that it was a little quieter and smoother at the top end than before. This is because the engine improvements made during the Crown’s minor change were carried over to the Mark II, and this engine now belongs to the best category of domestically produced six-cylinder engines.
The superior smoothness and low noise in the high rotation range are the six-cylinder’s biggest advantage over the four-cylinder Mark II with the same 2-liter displacement. However, in terms of power increase due to the installation of EFI (135ps compared to 115ps for the single-carburetor engine), it was not so noticeable when combined with the Aisin Warner automatic transmission. Therefore, there was no significant difference in power performance or automatic transmission performance from the previously tested model (see C/G April 1972 issue), and the same could be said for the power steering that came as standard.
The roominess and ride comfort are no different from the conventional single-carburetor L series. The seats are large, soft, and spacious, and the ride has the so-called “heavy” feeling that is characteristic of Toyota’s small cars. However, the wide radial tires that were installed on the test car, Bridgestone RD105 Wide 70s in size 185/70HR-14, clearly spoiled the ride. Especially when set to the specified high-speed pressure of 2.0/2.0kg/cm², the stiffness peculiar to radial tires is clearly apparent, and on rough roads the body is pushed up with a bang. If you switch back to the standard 6.45S-14 bias-ply tires, the ride should be much more comfortable, and it should have no affect on maneuverability at speeds that average drivers will drive.
Therefore, as long as it is equipped with bias-ply tires, this car is a perfectly good cruiser when driving on well-paved roads in the flow of traffic. The engine is smooth and quiet, the automatic transmission and power steering make driving effortless (although the brake pedal is still far from the floor, which is a pain), and you can even order air conditioning and power windows if you want them. And for a short time, we enjoyed cruising and listening to the FM radio. However, as soon as we entered the mountain roads, we realized that this car was not suitable for high-speed driving, at least not on mountain roads. The standard L-series suspension has excessive roll and understeer, and even with the help of the light power steering, it is not good at roads with a series of tight corners. Also, as is often the case with Toyota cars, it floats around in bumpy turns and the tail slides out relatively easily in tight corners, even with the wide radial tires. However, it is fast enough on roads with shallow curves and gentle ups and downs like the Izu Skyline.
One of the advantages of EFI is the fuel economy, which was 6.98km/l on a round trip to Hakone using the Tomei Expressway, about 10% better than a Mark II L sedan with an automatic transmission that was driven under almost the same conditions. However, if you drive around in the congested streets of Tokyo, the worst case scenario will be less than 4km/l. The standard price of the test car in Tokyo is 1,123,000 yen (with bias-ply tires), but if you add air conditioning, power windows, and a cruise control system that automatically maintains a pre-set speed, the price will be close to 1,300,000 yen. Still, for some people, it may be a cheap purchase, considering that it is a reasonable size and the contents are not that different from an American car.