I was browsing club4ag forums the other day, and came across a ten page thread full of AE86 pictures. There are lots of nice Corolla’s out there.
To give people a better sense of history Moto-P and the rest of the crew at Club4ag, recently re-posted the Club4ag which we all used to view each others Corolla’s six or seven years ago. The difference between this “classic” gallery, and the new gallery I found in Fun Talk is astounding. In fact… I even found it difficult to sort through the pages of the “classic” gallery. It’s just too boring. For the sake of recovering many pictures which I lost over the years though (Like Mac Dale doing the weird stretch point at Taka’s 27)… I did.
Back then… there was a whole other atmosphere to 86 life. We all drove stock, or very near stock cars. I was wise back then, and spent my money wisely (i.e. not dumping thousands into a 20 year old car) but even if I’d had the love back then, that I have now… I could not easily find any of the parts that we can now find at the local shop. No one I knew well had RCA’s, we made adjustable panhard rods out of… weird shit, 20v’s were impossible to come by, and GZE’s came out of domestic MR2’s. If you had JDM bumpers, you were divine. And thus… an amazing 86 was one that didn’t have any rust, nicely lowered with some good wheels.
Even videos from Japan showed simple cars. Sure they had RCA’s and LSD’s and all the other things we’ve come to call essentials, but they were of a much lighter tune that everything that seems to be flying around these days. Now days, every other car has a 20v or a Turbo, and to have a nice car you’ve got to have fat lipped bumpers and 9″ wheels while a really nice car has an SR20, or an F20C or… at least a formula atlantic type 4ag. That’s what these posts lead you to believe anyways.
I’ve been around longer than most however, and although I do occasionally get sucked into the hard tune mentality when I think seriously about my love for AE86 I realize that the best AE86’s are of a much more mildly mannered. For whatever reason, I get in my head that looong pull in fourth gear from turns four to six at my local Road Course. The car is just so underpowered that the revs are barely rising. Your sitting tight with foot on the floor… stomach knotting over the upcoming turn. And when your braking point finally arrives… it’s a flurry of activity as you take that curve. Somehow that great anticipation building toward the next corner, as you lug down a straight away, or after get offline and lose your revs, makes the whole experience of driving wonderful.
People spend a lot of time and money to make the AE86 into a fast car with turbo’s and carbon fiber, Nissan motors and bubble flares. I have done this to some degree, and I probably will for years to come. However… my favorite 86’s continue to be those of mild tune. In the end… my Favorite 86 of all time, was an easy decision. It is one that reminds me of my early days as an 86 fan, and one that upholds a very mild tune.
It is the White Levin featured at the end of Hot Version Vol.?? “AE86 Driving Techniques” (Heh Brando you still have my video!). After one hour of watching Tsuchiya, Orido and Kawasaki driving various 86’s, the show concludes with a time attack show down in the most lightly tuned 86 in the whole video. A stock motored Levin featuring all black bumpers, and a black sidemoulding, reasonable ride height, and some PINK 15″ mesh wheels. Simple, minimalistic, and yet some how compelling. The point implied by the Hot Version crew was that all the techniques demonstrated in the video, came down to one lap time, in a stockish car. It was all about a driver going fast. Not a car going fast, but a car showing the difference between drivers. It was all about, the classic personality of 86, plain and simple with a twist (bright pink mesh). That is the epitomy of AE86 to me, and something I think about every time I drive my car.