Motorsport can be a cruel world for cars. Sure, a racing pedigree can be a guaranteed route toward iconic status, but it’s also good for culling plenty of road cars rebuilt for track use and wrecked into extinction.
Toyota’s AE86 Corolla is one of the best-known track weapons in the world. Equally at home on Japanese drift circuits as it is on rally stages throughout Europe, the rear-drive pocket rocket is a favorite for the racer on a budget, but its popularity means loads of them bought an early ticket to the scrap heap in the sky. It’s made finding a good, factory-spec car nearly impossible.
That’s only half the problem. A starring role in the Initial D series has given the AE86 a cult following, and as a result the last straight survivors are not only hard to find but sought after as show cars, and are rapidly climbing in value. They’re no longer the performance bargain they once were.
It’s getting so bad that even Japanese tuners are struggling to find decent ones for a good price these days. So it’ll probably surprise you to find out that this Tokyo Auto Salon star, N2-spec widebody track monster started out as a $600 bargain for owner Kazumi Nakamura. That’s one very lucky find.
“The AE86 is perfect for racing,” he says. “It’s light, with a responsive engine, and it’s easy to control at the limit. With this one I wanted to see how far I could push that limit.”
Kazumi’s not your average owner. The founder of Japanese AE86 specialty shop Custom Garage Speed, he’s been building street and track-ready performance machinery for more than a decade. Raised on a mix of street-based tuning, drifting, and time-attack, when he’s looking to push a car as far as possible, you know there’s something unhinged in the pipeline.
“I started with a rough car, but the shell was straight, and it was a bargain for what I paid,” Kazumi says. “The bodywork was due for a complete overhaul anyway, and the interior was going to be stripped so I wasn’t bothered with how it looked. It just needed to be solid.”
Bursting out of the factory body lines from every angle like the Incredible Hulk, it’s hard to imagine this as a standard car. But don’t be fooled into thinking it’s some polished show pony—every inch of the additional bodywork is functional and designed to be used at the performance limit.
Even more impressive, is that the entire transformation happened in-house.
“This one has our N3 kit. It’s based on the N2-spec fenders and widens the front and rear by 200 mm for a wider track,” Kazumi says. “It makes the whole car much more stable under heavy cornering, and gives loads of presence, too.”
Fenders that wide take a lot of filling, and Kazumi’s got that licked with 15-inch, three-piece Panasport G7 rims measuring 10 inches wide at the rear and only half an inch less at the front. With sticky Bridgestone road-legal track tires to keep it where it’s meant to be, there’s more than enough grip to keep most people happy. And yes, if you’re wondering, those show-ready rims get used on the track.
There’s no shortage of twisted aggression under the skin either, where you’ll find just as much evidence of Kazumi’s ability to fine-tune cars down to the tiniest details.
At the heart of it all is the AE86’s famous 4A-GE powerplant. In 16v spec it’s good for 130 bhp from the factory, but this engine now puts out over 200 bhp thanks to a Weber 45mm carburetor conversion, ported and polished head, and race-spec cam profiles. It’s a healthy dose of power for a lightweight car like this one.
At each corner, Greddy coilovers and HKS top mounts let Kazumi set up the suspension for each event. And to press the tires even harder into the black stuff, he’s fitted a full catalog of his own aero parts that’ll let it take corners hard enough to crush internal organs.