Junkyard Find: 2010 Toyota Corolla, Final Days of NUMMI Edition
On April 1, 2010, the final vehicle built at the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant rolled off the production line. That vehicle was a red Corolla, and I spent years searching junkyards for a discarded Corolla built during the final few months of the storied GM-Toyota joint venture in Fremont, California. Finally, success!
Because the big self-service junkyard chains usually include vehicle VINs in their online inventory listings, I was able to search for just 2010 Corollas and then rule out all those with VINs starting with the numeral 2 (indicating manufacture at the TMMC plant in Ontario). This searching only made much sense during the last few years, because you don't find many sub-10-year-old Toyotas at Ewe Pullet-type yards.
After looking at dozens of junked '10 NUMMI Corollas and studying their dates of manufactures and VINs, I also knew that I needed a car with the final six VIN digits of 350xxx or higher in order to get one built during the final couple of months. Here we go, a base NUMMI Corolla with VIN ending in 353xxx!
I learned about today's Junkyard Find back in June, and I burned rubber getting over to the Aurora Pick Your Part (a fine establishment located near the Denver County Jail). This yard often has seriously cool stuff in inventory (e.g., a 1937 Hudson Terraplane, a gray-market Citroën CX or a 1951 Buick Roadmaster Riviera), and I ran into one such car before I even got to the NUMMI Corolla: a Mexican-market Suzuki SX-4 S-Cross. Naturally, I had to write about that car immediately.
And then I spotted this 2010 Saturn Outlook, which turned out to be one of the 1,037 "Zombie Outlooks" built more than a year after the announcement of the Saturn Division's demise (so that The General could "utilize existing materials"). Clearly, this machine would give me an enjoyable opportunity to write about the fascinating days of 2010 (which, not coincidentally, was the year I began writing for this publication), and so I postponed my article about the Final Days of NUMMI Edition Corolla.
This all happened not long after Autoblog (which was buying four Junkyard Gems per week from me) fired all its writers, and just before Hearst fired nearly everyone at Autoweek (which was buying one Junkyard Treasure per week from me), and so suddenly I had a surfeit of A-List junkyard vehicles I'd already photographed. In all the excitement, I forgot about this Corolla… until now.
Normally, a stripped-out base tenth-generation Corolla wouldn't be worthy of a Junkyard Find article, but I've been obsessed with finding junked examples of late NUMMI cars for many years.
I came of driving age in the East Bay, just up the Nimitz Freeway from what started out as GM's Fremont Assembly. The final Fremont Assembly car ( an Olds Cutlass Ciera) was built in 1982. Two years later, the plant became NUMMI (the first car built there was a 1985 Chevy Nova aka Americanized AE82 Sprinter). Today, it's the Tesla Factory.
My dad was a pump and filter salesman who supplied the NUMMI paint shop with their filter vessels and inserts from the late 1980s all the way through the final Corolla. I still run across NUMMI stuff every time I visit my East Bay relatives, e.g., this Environmental Policy card. Kaizen means "change for the better" and is one of the 12 pillars of the Toyota Production System. Oh, wait, the Global Toyota site says the Toyota Production System has just two pillars!
I've written about some Fremont Assembly vehicles in junkyards over the years; the most recent was this 1976 El Camino in Colorado. I've even found a few discarded cars built at Fremont Assembly's East Bay predecessor, Oakland Assembly.
It took until this year, but I finally managed to find a Fremont-built Tesla in a self-service boneyard. That gives me the complete Fremont Assembly/NUMMI/Tesla Factory set.
Prior to the last Corolla on April Fools' Day 2010, the final vehicles built at NUMMI were Pontiac Vibes (August of 2009) and Toyota Tacomas ( March 27, 2010). Toyota trucks that new just don't show up at Ewe Pullets, which meant the latest NUMMI car I'd documented before now was this Vibe built in July of 2009 (in the very same junkyard as today's Corolla).
This Corolla is a base model, but at least its original buyer paid $810 extra for the automatic transmission (standard equipment was a five-speed manual). By 2010, US-market Corollas all got air conditioning at no extra charge.
The MSRP for this car was $17,010 with the automatic, or about $25,497 in 2025 dollars. Was it a fleet purchase? It sure looks like one.
The engine is a 2ZR-FE 1.8-liter four-cylinder, rated at 132 horsepower and 128 pound-feet.
If you wanted your '10 Corolla with a 2.4-liter 2AZ-FE with 162 horses, you had to buy the XRS for $19,720 (manual) or $20,910 (automatic). The XRS wasn't built at NUMMI, though.
A base Corolla would be ideal for your driving school (although I'll bet The General's increasingly desperate salesmen were offering steals on Pontiacs, Saturns and Saabs in 2010).
2010 Toyota Corolla in Colorado junkyard.
2010 Toyota Corolla in Colorado junkyard.
2010 Toyota Corolla in Colorado junkyard.
2010 Toyota Corolla in Colorado junkyard.
2010 Toyota Corolla in Colorado junkyard.
2010 Toyota Corolla in Colorado junkyard.
2010 Toyota Corolla in Colorado junkyard.
2010 Toyota Corolla in Colorado junkyard.
2010 Toyota Corolla in Colorado junkyard.
2010 Toyota Corolla in Colorado junkyard.
2010 Toyota Corolla in Colorado junkyard.
2010 Toyota Corolla in Colorado junkyard.
2010 Toyota Corolla in Colorado junkyard.
2010 Toyota Corolla in Colorado junkyard.
2010 Toyota Corolla in Colorado junkyard.
[Images: The Author]
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Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Hagerty and The Truth About Cars.
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As you mentioned the blood baths at Autoblog and Autoweek. The same happened at Kelley Blue Book a few months ago to Micah Muzio who did many of the videos for the website. Appears the editorial staff were called in the office and Micah did not make the cut.
He has a video about the layoff on YouTube. 🚗🚗🚗
Incredible find! Tracking down a late NUMMI Corolla in a junkyard is like automotive treasure hunting I’ve done similar hunts, and finally spotting that VIN never gets old. Love the mix of history and nostalgia here!