As a kid, and like many kids alongside me, I lusted after the Toyota AE86. The powerful combination of Fast and Furious and Initial D suddenly made the everyday Japanese car an acquirable and endlessly customizable hero. But now that I’m older and slightly less unwise, was it always really what it was cracked up to be? Join me while we see what bits stand the test of time and which ones were more wishful thinking even when it was new.
It’s hard to elude the image that the AE86 has done for itself. Go to meet people with an affinity for Japanese cars and they’ll tell you it’s one of the best. Go to any aficionado of drifting and they’ll tell you it’s perfectly suited for the sport. So perfectly suited in fact that Keiichi Tsuchiya, who has dabbled in Japanese Touring cars, Le Mans and NASCAR in addition to being the Drift King, used it as his main Togue Machine. Ask someone who loves videogames, and they’ll mention Gran Turismo. Anime or Manga? There’s always Initial D. And there is where we can start the analysis.
The Toyota AE86, for those that have been living under a rock, is the sport coupe version of the fifth generation Toyota Corolla. Sold between 1983 and 1987, it was offered as either a 3-door liftback or a two-door coupe, its main difference in comparison to the rest of the E80-series of Corollas was that it retained the rear-wheel drive layout of its predecessors instead of moving to front-wheel drive alongside them. Power-wise you had the 1.6-liter 4AGE engine producing 128 horsepower (112 in the North American version, which was sold as the Corolla GT-S) and mated to a five-speed manual gearbox. An automatic would become available later in the production run.
This wasn’t even the most sport-oriented vehicle to have this engine in it; the MR2 took it and put it in a mid-engine package with perfect weight distribution, even offering a supercharger that would boost the power up to 145 horsepower. Going back to Initial D, the main point of the early parts of the series was that the main character’s skill was so beyond everyone else’s that he could beat everyone in that beaten up tofu delivery car. The car itself was a handicap. Drift King’s AE86 had a very long list of modifications. So why is the AE86 more celebrated than the MR2?
Well, it is endlessly tunable for starters. Like all Toyota drivetrains of the time, the 4AGE and that gearbox was built to a very high level of strength and durability, making it easier to get more power from them. The fact that it wasn’t mid-engined like the MR2 also meant it was easier to work on in comparison. Second, a lot more people would find it easier to rationalize something with four seats, a trunk and an engine in the front than they would a two-seater with a frunk and the engine in the middle. Finally, the drifting scene played a huge part in the AE86’s rise. And I’ve been told by the finest people on the Internet that a mid-engine car is a lot more difficult to drift, so that’s another point against the MR2. The AE86, on the other hand, was the first of what we now accept as the standard “drifter cars”.
The FC RX7 came out two years after the AE86 and the S13 Nissan Silvia three years after that. I suppose that some street racers bought these cars new, but I’m guessing the majority came from used car lots and classified ads. That depreciation curve could very well be one of the key factors. After all, when you’re young there’s no better car than the one you can afford is it? And the fact that it’s rear-wheel drive and it has a manual means that it’s a perfect base for whatever you want to do with it, be it drifting or rallying or circuit racing.
And that’s the most objective way to view the AE86. As the perfect base for its time. A plain white canvas that owners could turn into whatever their imagination and wallets could come up with. Like a 1930’s Ford or a 1955 Chevy or a 1970’s Nova or any Ford Mustang. In that sense, you could make the argument that the AE86 essentially became Japan’s Mustang. By itself already good but easily transformed into something a lot better by the combination of resale values that become indirectly responsible for a thriving aftermarket. But does this mean that the AE86 is undeserving of all the glory that it has been given to it? Well, yes and no.
By itself the AE86 would only be considered “Better than Average”. This is a good thing but not necessarily something that would produce the reaction that the AE86 did. Let’s not forget that he Suzuki Kizashi was also better than average; and as said earlier, for pure driving thrills the MR2 was an improvement provided both vehicles were stock. But it was precisely the right car at precisely the right time. To say it’s not worthy of glory would be to say that something like the 1965 mustang isn’t either because at the end of the day it was just a dressed up Falcon. I say to you CC Commentariat, what do you think? Overhyped? Worth it? Where do you stand on the car that everyone seems to like?
? Definitely the best-looking & most desirable Corolla ever, wholly at variance with the model’s stodgy rep. A coworker owned one of these.
A co-worker of mine had the Corolla GT-S that looked much like the red one in the picture labeled “Sprinter”… Funny, I always thought a Sprinter was a Dodge/Mercedes/Freighliner Van with a pituitary problem; what was up with the multiple brands of the same van anyway? but I digress…. Her Corolla was a strange coppery gold color over black two-tone like the one in the picture with the same stock wheels. She bought it new and kept it for many years. It was really a good car. Inspired me to buy a used 84 Celica GT which I absolutely loved. Nice little cars these 80’s RWD Toyotas were…
Retro-SR,
You are aware that Daimler (M-B), Chrysler (Dodge), and Freightliner were once part of 1 large corporation?
Yeah, I knew that, but usually, when a brand does a sister car, or a badge engineering job, the other car division uses a different model name… i.e. Chevy Camaro; Pontiac Firebird. The “Sprinter” model name is used across all three of those divisions. I just find it weird.
Keeping track of OEMs or who owns whom in business is almost like a shell game. I just learned that GE Appliances was sold to Haier (a Chinese firm, not German) after the sale to Sweden’s Electrolux was nixed by regulators.
However, the factory is in Louisville, KY, while other US-brand appliances are often made in Mexico now.
Global economy…. Isn’t it fun?
Nice overview !
Regarding hot Corollas, 10 years ago the Corolla hatchback below was the last one, although I don’t know about other markets. The factory T-Sport was good for 192 hp, but Toyota Motorsport GmbH built a 225 hp Toyota Corolla 1.8 16v VVTL-i T-Sport Compressor. It was available through the Toyota dealerships.
Interior, 6 speed manual.
As a kid in the midwest at that time, I don’t know if I ever saw one. I wasn’t even aware of them to be honest.
This was a fairly common sight when new(also in red…and I think I remember a yellow version but I’m not 100% on that)
I am 49, and I would still take an AE86. Manual trans, garage kept, owned by a little old lady who only drove it to church and bridge club. 22K original miles. My estate sale fantasy. Or we could also sub a 1970 Corona Mark II 2dr hardtop under the same conditions. I would not complain. 🙂 Are we going to see any Land Cruiser stuff this week?
My aunt had one – a blue ’85 SR5 – but it had just a plain 4A engine. It looked like the engine in the Tercel. It had an easy life, but something killed it early on, as it spun a rod bearing. It was replaced with an 87 Accord, and they’ve owned Hondas since.
Let me be pedantic for a second
if it had the 4A engine, it what an AE85. Same basic chassis except the 86 had beefed up suspension, diff, brake and the engine. That’s why Gerardo only talked about the 4AGE in the article.
You can counter-argue that all North American Model were all AE88 and you would be correct too.
I went to college with a girl who drove a silver notchback coupe with automatic overdrive. I remember it being a nice driving car and equipped a couple notches above what one would expect for a Corolla at the time. It seemed like in the 80’s the name Corolla was the Toyota equivalent of Chrysler’s Lebaron. There was every kind of variant. I remember riding in my friend’s car and commenting that I wouldn’t have thought a Corolla would be so upscale.
Somewhere in my pics is an immaculate curbside AE85 or 86; completely unbreathed upon. Thanks to articles like this and AUWM, I place original versions of these alongside original R32-34 GTRs as future investment-grade classics. Disclaimer: I’ve never made money on any of my cars.
I don’t know if Australia ever officially got the 4A-GE engine — the only info I could find suggested that the Australia-bound version had only the milder engine, although that may have changed later on. (The U.S. got only the 4A-C the first year and the twin-cam engine the second.) I know there are some private and gray ex-JDM cars, though.
I think they are somewhat overrated. They are limited by their solid rear axle. Sweet 16v engine notwithstanding (Ford BDA inspired though), they were a very conservative design even when new. I drove one and it was pretty agricultural (NVH) for today’s standards. The shifter feel was very good though and the engine was willing.
I’d say the only reason Tsuchiya loves them so much is because he started out with them. And as we all know, there is no love like the first one.
There are much better cars, and cheaper now due to less hype. For example an early Mazda MX-5.
These were fairly uncommon when I was growing up, the ones I did see were usually very rusty and more often (all I recall actually) were the 2 door coupe. My biggest exposure was in the gran turismo games, as this was the only car you could afford when starting. Cool cars though, I read ateupwithmotor’s excellent article on these things a while back and learned to appreciate them more for what they are. I always liked the looks, especially the non pop up light versions.
Funny fact about the 2-door, apparently it’s the best of the two because it’s ever so slightly (and I do mean minute differences here) stiffer.
Not a big surprise, really — cutting bigger holes in a monocoque structure reduces its rigidity, and a hatch is a pretty big hole.
Makes sense. Fox Mustangs are like that as well, the notch is definitely a bit stiffer, it’s slightly less of a squeak/rattle trap than the hatch… slightly lol
My understanding is there was also an AE85 and an AE88. The AE88 was the top dog and the AE85 was the lightest. Tuners prefer the AE85 for its lighter weight and will build the engine up to match or exceed the engine of the AE88. I am not a Toyota expert though, so I might not have this 100% accurate.
I am a fan of extremely light cars with rear wheel drive and good front/rear weight distribution. I like the very responsive steering of really light RWD cars.
The better Japanese cars in terms of form, balance, and proportions, in my opinion are:
first year Datsun 240
first gen Mazda Miata
80s vintage RWD Toyota Corolla
Honda S800 fastback coupe
Its too bad the Miata was not designed as a fastback coupe instead of a roadster. I’m just not a fan of convertibles. The Honda S800 would’ve been perfect if it had more motor. It needed a hundred horses to really perform. The 240 needed to lose about 250 lbs to be perfect.
The AE85 was the basic JDM version, which had a milder 1.5-liter engine, smaller tires, etc. AE88 was just the designation for North American cars.
There were a bunch of grades in Japan (in Corolla and Sprinter versions) with different equipment, so at least there you could pretty much tailor whether you wanted the performance stuff, the convenience accessories, or both. I can see people starting with an AE85 because it was cheaper, but most of the performance stuff it lacks (like bigger wheels/tires) you’d end up putting back on anyway, so it’s not likely to end up lighter.
I agree about the Miata. Like the concept, don’t like not having a roof over my head.
I want to address again the apparent power disparity between JDM and U.S. versions of the early 16-valve 4A-GE. The 130 PS rating in Japan was a JIS gross rating, whereas the U.S. rating was SAE net, so in net terms, the Japanese engines had about the same power as the U.S. versions, give or take. The most powerful iteration of the early engine was the high-compression, uncatalyzed European version, which had 122 bhp (124 PS) DIN.
As for its reputation, I think the other point that helped make it popular is that Toyota kept developing the 4A-GE engine, adding more power to it. I know people have swapped in the later iterations, including the 20-valve versions, so I assume it’s not difficult — it might even be bolt-in, although I’m not sure about that. (I’m no tuner.)
When these cars came out, I was a teen with a late sixties era large MOPAR 2door with a hotrodded 440 engine producing in excess of 400HP. I remember seeing a brand new one of these Corollas and thinking they were a little bit cute and thought of them as kind of a rear drive version of a Honda Prelude which was an interesting concept to me because I liked the look of a Honda Prelude but despised front wheel drive. I do not ever recall seeing the hatchback version of this Corolla, BTW. To me, it seemed like a great car for a girl. At that time I considered anything less than a 400 CI V8 to be beneath me. I was a dumb teenager who’s only expenses was his car and his entertainment, and fuel economy did not concern me.
I still remember the day I started to change my mind about big block V8 engines. I was in my late teens, just out of highschool I think. I had a friend who owned a Ford Pantera with a 351 cleveland engine. Yep, less than 400 cubes so I snickered at it when he was not around. Well, one day he asked me to follow him to the shop because it was running poorly and to give him a ride back when he dropped it off. I met him at a place in the old downtown area of a medium to large city and followed him a couple or three miles through the heart of the highrise downtown area and some old towne area with brick streets. Some one way streets. Surprisingly little traffic on some of the roads. Lights or stop signs at almost every corner. It quickly became a race. I knew the Pantera was designed as a race car and mine was not. But I also knew it was set up for high speed racing, as in 140MPH, and it was running like crap at the moment. We were doing street corner to street corner shenanigans which was more like what my car was meant to do.
I was soon doing 4 wheel drifts, locking up brakes, and burning rubber, fishtailing, flying sideways down the wrong side of streets, and leaving behind mayhem in the form of thick blue smoke and black marks on all the streets and rattling windows with my excessively loud exhaust. Yet I was still losing ground to the Pantera and he was not so much as chirping the tires and wasn’t really drawing any attention to himself or making any noise. He was taking a right hand 90 degree turn on a brick intersection at 35MPH without any drama.
That was my “aha” moment. If a 351 in a Pantera could do that, what could a 289 do in a Ford Cobra? And then maybe even a 6 cylinder in something small enough and light enough!
In the market for a used car in the mid-1990s, I kept looking for a nice Corolla coupe like this. I really wanted one but it proved elusive. Now I know why, at the time I had no clue about the following these cars had among the rice boys who must have beaten me to the few available examples. I had zero interest in that stuff, I just liked the design and the Toyota reliability. I eventually settled for a rusty ’83 Supra that my mom later wrecked. I would happily take either car today, but I still have no use for the rice boys who probably destroyed all of them by now.
I never gave these a second look when I was growing up (these were new when I was a kid). Initial D and Gran Turismo were years off, and they just seemed like another Japanese sporty coupe. Tons of those around and these were far from the most attractive; in fact, the hatchback looks rather awkward from the rear without the spoiler on higher-line versions that breaks up the large expanse of metal between the taillight panel and the glass.
Nowadays, I respect them a lot more for what they are, and for what they can be. I’ve never driven one and probably never will, given how few unmolested examples are out there, but a few still exist. A neighborhood down the street from mine features a clean and mostly original-looking GT-S Twin Cam coupe…
So I found a 84 sr5 in the junkyard (I needed the axle for my 80 Corona) and the VIN said AE86 but everyone is saying North American hachis are AE85 or AE88, did I stumble across something rare?
From what I can tell from Wikipedia (a source of sometimes questionable validity of course) AE86 is the correct VIN for a North American SR5. A base/DX will be AE85, SR-5 AE86, and GT-S AE88. Chassis code for the SR5 or the GT-S will both be AE86 but the VINs differ. So I think what you found is normal for an SR5.
Have read claims the Toyota A engine used in the AE86 and other cars shares many similarities with the Cosworth BDA engine, to the point some believe Toyota either drew inspiration from or copied the latter. – http://www.billzilla.org/4agstock.htm
It is also curious to note there appears to be many similarities between the Toyota A engine and Daihatsu C-Series 3-cylinder, which would not be surprising given the ties between the two companies.
Both engines appeared roughly at the same time during the mid/late-1970s, both have cast-iron blocks with alloy-heads and belt-drives, the 1-litre Daihatsu CB and 1.3-litre Toyota 2A share the same bore with Daihatsu even making use of Toyota’s lean-burn design system that it is easily to all but conclude the Daihatsu C-Series engine is basically a 3-cylinder version of the Toyota A engine 4-cylinder.
It also brings up the question of whether the Daihatsu E-Series 3-cylinder and Daihatsu H-Series 4-cylinder engines were derived from any other Toyota engines (or more accurately Toyota utilized some form of the former).