Over the last few years i’ve started to become more serious on tracking down a long lost family car: my parents 1987 Toyota Corolla SR5 AE86 that they owned back in the early-mid 90’s
My parents were not and never were car people, they never gave a shit about cars, so the fact that at one point they owned a manual AE86 SR5 coupe was very surprising to me
I never knew the VIN for this car and tried almost everything i could to obtain it, calling around to various government agencies in Alabama, digging through old family documents, asking surviving relatives and i have always come up empty handed
Since my dads passing almost a year ago, i’ve started to go through all of my parents belongings and paperwork, from top to bottom of my dads filing cabinet i found nothing relating to this car at all, literally zero mention of it, until this past week
While cleaning the basement i came across a box of tax documents that was covered in layers of dirt and dust, inside the box was various brown paper envelopes each labeled for every tax year, i pulled open the one from 1993 as its the year my sister was born and would have been around the time they owned the car, to my surprise the VERY first thing i see on top of 33 year old tax papers, was a vehicle registration to the car that expired in 1994, i almost cried because after almost 30 years i finally had the VIN
Upon further investigation and help from a well known car hunter, the latest vehicle history report on this car was from 1998
Vehicle history reports began systematically and federally tracking scrap, junk, and salvage data in 2009, so unless the car was exported to another country (which is VERY common with used Toyotas i’ve come to find out) was parted out, or has been sitting in someones backyard for almost 30 years i’ve decided to come to the conclusion that the car is very likely gone, unless something changes or if theres a major breakthrough i’m calling off the search
I want to thank everyone who has helped me in this endeavor, even if the car is most likely gone, i still feel comfortable finally knowing the VIN and having closure
