I forgot the best part though - whoever first owned this Xrs really put some money into it.
it has a nice cold air intake, short throw shifter, and a fuel management module connected to the air intake so that it still idles properly when you mess with the throttle response settings.
I don’t know how much power it actually adds, but it was completely un-detectable during the test drive, and feels like it’s been professionally tuned.
even the LED under-body lights are wired up well, and the switches are installed discretely. It’s ridiculous, but totally hidden, until i get drunk and start having the car do “party tricks” in the driveway.
i used the mods to negotiate the sale price down. The car has sat on 3?lots for a total of almost 5 YEARS. I flat-out told the sales mgr, “you bought this at auction because it’s a really clean corolla with 68,000 miles on it. I’m betting you got it for $5500, but didn’t realize it was a manual transmission. The car fax says it’s sat here since May, after being on two other lots for a long time. This is a $7500 car. That’s a fair price, and leaves you enough meat on the bone to pocket something, but we both know that The market for a 5-speed corolla is very limited.”
technically the sale price was $8100, but they gave me $900 for the 2003 corolla, which had over 236,000 miles on it.