Three problems related to cruise control have been reported for the 1998 Toyota Corolla. The most recently reported issues are listed below.
When ever I put my cruise control on, the car will stay at the speed that I set it at for just a short while. It then starts to speed up by 2 mph and now im cruising at what I set it at +2, then it will speed up again by 2 mph, and then im cruising at what I set it at + 4 mph. I had this happen to me once where the cruise control raised my speed by 8 mph once with out me trying to raise my own speed. I believe this could be a safety issue in the winter time snow and ice, also if I didn't pay attention to the speed in which I was traveling I could of gotten a spending ticket - (blame it on the cruise control) yeah right.
My 1998 Toyota Corolla will not always shut down the throttle on cruise control by hitting the brake or the cruise control off button. It will push you straight through a stop sign. I ended up taking the fuse out of the cruise control . Fixed the problem but I no longer have cruise. I tried to tell Toyota this but they make it next to impossible to email them to report this symptom. I think they do not want to know.
I bought a 1998 Toyota Corolla le in July. I found that the cruise control would downshift the automatic transmission nicely when climbing slight hills at highway speed. Unfortunately, it will not shift back up to fourth gear for a long period of time even going downhill. I checked out the NHTSA site and found a TSB for the problem. I contacted Toyota thinking they would repair this admitted defect but they repeatedly refused. This is a safety issue as it is very distracting to have to disengage the cruise control, and then re-engage it every time this happens. There are a number of hills in my daily commute. This should be a recall not a TSB.