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Remembering Japanese cars from the past

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Car feature: Original AE86 cup racer from Holland Part 2

The AE86 driven by Mike van der Raadt was one of the cars used in the Dutch Corolla Cup. The Dutch Corolla Cup started out as a one brand only racing cup. All cars should be equal to each other and could only be modified under restrictions. This allowed drivers to show their skills more than the tuners could do with time and money. It made the cup very competitive and fun to watch. Of course, due to the equality of the cars, a lot of banging was done and not many of the cars survived.
Here you can see some pictures of the Dutch Corolla Cup in action:
Dutch Corolla Cup with three Corolla TE71 competing
Dutch Corolla Cup with four Corolla TE71 in the rain

When the Dutch Corolla Cup entered its second generation of Rollas it received a different engine as well: the 4AGE of the AE86 instead of the 2T-G of the TE71. With this new engine it became again the field of time and money. The more money put into the team, the better the outcome. Then in 1986, also probably due to the obsoletion of RWD Toyota cars, the new Starlet took over and the races were only driven with the new FWD Starlets.

Of course the teams and drivers still used their Corollas in different cups and races, like for instance the ETCC, BTTC or endurance races.

The AE86 driven by Mike van der Raadt was a very competitive car in the Dutch Corolla Cup and not only in the Corolla Cup, but also later on in the Super Touring Class (nowadays referred as Group A). Theo Koks said in his last interview that there were only two really big competitors: the AE86 driven by Mike van der Raadt and the VW Sirocco of the director of Zandvoort.
As you can see in the picture below the Corolla was competing in the Super Touring class:
Dutch Corolla AE86 tuned by Nobels

And it claims that the Corolla GT put the lap record of Zandvoort back into Dutch hands. IMO that is a bit impossible: Formula one just disappeared from Zandvoort back then and atleast those cars should be much much faster than this Corolla GT. Perhaps the lap record was set for the Super Touring class.

Back to the Corolla Cup: there are most probably still some other Corolla Cup or endurance racecars out there. I know for instance that the AE86 driven by Jasper Spaan stared its life as an endurance racer. It is RHD, non-European from origin and had a diff cooler in its axle. It was stored for 16 or 17 years when he bought it. Maybe this car was used in one of the endurance races on Spa as well.

I did find a bunch of pictures of Toyota Corollas (AE86) on Spa Francorchamps here, but no pictures of Jasper’s car. Anyone got more pictures of the old endurance races on Spa Francorchamps?

Tribute: Paul Newman Skyline RS R30

I read the news yesterday and Japanese Nostalgic Car blogged about this as well: Paul Newman passed away.

Apart from many good movies he made he was also quite close to Nissan: he raced several Datsuns during the 60s and 70s and in the early 80s he even got a special edition Nissan Skyline R30 with his name on it (rebadged GT-EX) and featured the ads for them:

Another small detail: the last Skyline R30 in the ads features the Plasma FJ engine which I blogged about in May this year:
http://www.banpei.net/content/nissan-silvia-bs110-rs240-rally
Therefore it should be a Skyline RS in the ad.

I think there was no greater tribute in his life than this. ;)

Carina Sightings: Toyota Carina AA63 vs Volkswagen Polo (Gol) in Peru

I found this recent video of a dragrace on 24th of august 2008 with a final between a Volkswagen Polo (called Gol here) and a Toyota Carina AA63 in Peru.


17 seconds Final Round August 24 2008 CADEPOR
Spoiler: unfortunately the Carina AA63 does not win this race (0.6 seconds) but I think it is very nice to see that the AA63 actually made it to other countries than Japan!

As you can see in the picture below it is a LHD car, so it is not imported from Japan:
Toyota Carina AA63 dragracer in Peru

The side of the car has the “Twincam 16” writings on it, it has 15 inch Celica Supra rims and the rear lights look kouki to me. In other words: this a genuine left hand drive AA63 outside Japan. :)

Quick search on AE86 at Amazon.com

Amazing! I’ve never really followed Amazon since I only bought books at local stores… Since I moved to Hilversum I don’t really have a good English bookstore anymore and I’m forced to buy my English books somewhere else.

That’s when I started to use Amazon again. For the fun I wanted to know what books there were on Toyota Corolla AE86. Boy what a surprise I had! ;)

First of all: top product was Car Hacks & Mods For Dummies, which of course is utterly crap!

Then I saw that not only books were sold, but also diecast models: AE86 diecast scale model

But then I scrolled down and saw these automitve products:
FRP Toyota Corolla AE86 bodykit and Prothane (18-2010) AE86 Bushings – AE86

The bushings are even cheaper than what we sold in the AEU86 shop or PASS Racing!

Of course I did search upon “AA63”, “TA63” and “Toyota Carina” but that did not return any relevant results… I think I only search on Amazon for interchangeable parts with the AE86 then. ;)

To give an impression what Toyota Corolla AE86 stuff is available on Amazon:

AE86 with 380hp back in 1991

I found this old footage on Youtube:

According to the user who placed the video this Corolla Levin AE86 has a 380hp turbo-ed 4AGE. Very impressive, and more impressive they did that 17 years ago!!

You can see the exhaust got a simple turbo manifold and a lot of piping go through the enginebay. The turbo is enormous, so I expect the boost being at least 16psi! Looking at the piping the car probably has an intercooler under the front air dam. And the engine is not a 4AGZE block which currently is a popular basis for turbocharging but a normal bigport (probably second generation) 4AGE: it still has the TVIS.

At first I doubted about the authenticy of this video, but if I look well to both surroundings (and clothing of the people) and other videos this user posted I can conclude that the footage is authentic! Back in those days the only modifications were functional modifications: tower brace, boost gauge, revmeter and that’s it. Other from that the car looks like a stock kouki AE86 which just rolled out of the Toyota factory!

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