Left: cover still from a TikTok video by @daily.network.new. Right: the front of a black car (Unsplash photo by Arthur Hinton).

A teenage girl runs across a wet driveway toward a silver Toyota Corolla parked by a gray fence, slows down, and asks the people behind her, “Is this where you guys left?” Then comes a “Yes!” and a few seconds later she is asking, “Where’s the keys?”

The clip was shared by @daily.network.new, an account that calls itself Daily Network News. It is not the account of the person who filmed it. The video is set up as a reaction: the original footage plays in the top half, and a man watches it in the bottom half. The account’s text across the middle says that raising a child who gets so excited about owning a 20 year old Toyota Corolla “is a job well done.” The person who filmed the original is not identified in the post.

The original footage starts with her walking out toward the street with her back to the camera, then breaking into a run once she sees the car. She circles to the driver’s side, puts both hands on the roof, turns back to the camera and laughs. She opens the door, stands in it for a moment, and then drops into the seat.

Then the questions start. “Wait, do I have to put it in like that?” she asks, and someone tells her, “It has a button.” “Oh, it does?” she says. “Oh, dang.” She asks, “Wait, can I start it just to see?” At one point the shot flips completely upside down, and someone asks, “Why is it, like, upside down?”

The last line of the clip is the one the reposting account built its caption around. Sitting in the driver’s seat of the silver Corolla, she says it out loud: “I have a car.”

How Many Corollas Toyota Has Sold

According to Toyota, the Corolla was introduced in 1966, had reached 25 million sold worldwide by 2002, became the best selling car model in history in 1997, and passed 50 million sold in July 2021. Toyota began building Corollas in the United States by the mid 1980s and now builds them at its Mississippi plant, which opened in 2011.

Check This Before You Hand Over the Keys

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Takata air bag Do Not Drive list includes certain 2003 and 2004 Corollas, including the Matrix, along with certain 2004 and 2005 RAV4s. NHTSA says these vehicles carry “a far higher risk of ruptures during air bag deployment” than other recalled Takata air bags, and it and the manufacturers urge owners not to drive them until they are repaired. The video does not give this car’s model year, so its VIN is the way to find out where it stands.

  • Run the car’s VIN through NHTSA’s recall lookup before the reveal, not after.
  • If an air bag recall is open, NHTSA says to call a dealer right away to schedule the free repair, and that replacement parts are available.
  • Check the recall status again even if the seller says the work was done. The lookup shows whether a recall is still open on that specific car.
  • Have a mechanic look over brakes, tires, belts and fluids on any car that age before a new driver takes it out alone.

And spend ten minutes in the driver’s seat with your new driver before the first trip, the way this video accidentally does. Every older car has its quirks, and the questions she asks when she first sits down, how to start it and what the button does, are exactly the ones to answer with the car parked.

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