Toyota Repair: Engine continually dies, air flow meter, vacuum leak

Question
My client has a '88 4-cylinder toyota camry and when he starts his car without warming it up and starts driving, the car will reache 1500 rpm but then drop down to 0 and dies. I was wondering if you knew why?

Answer
The most common cause is that there is a large vacuum leak on the intake side, what happens if the car is started and left to idle without driving it, does it have fast idle and then drop down as it warms up and then does the engine die when reaching normal temperature?
Or does the engine die out as soon as it's started up say within thre seconds or so, does the engine completely refuse to idle after warm up? In any case look for a vacuum leak somewhere on the intake system or possibly an air flow meter problem.