My First Corolla AE86 – What Happened To The AE86? – Part Three

 

In my previous post, I wrote about my first AE86, how I became the owner, how I fixed up the car, and then how I had to make the tough decision to sell the car due to family expansion. When I put the car up for sale, there was hardly any interest in the car. I can’t blame this as the car was well known on the forums and we all knew the Frankenstein history of it. But I did find a buyer: an Irishman called Ian wanted to buy the car. He already owned three AE86es: an ex-Group A car, a drift car and another one that he was restoring. His plan was that my car would become his daily driver. He would fly to the Netherlands on Saturday, I would pick him up and both of us would drive to Rotterdam to get the license plates swapped for export plates and then he would board a ferry in the port.

I picked up Ian from Schiphol on a sunny Saturday and we made the trip to Rotterdam. I was the person driving as for Ian it would be the first time driving both LHD and on the right side of the road. He said he could cope with either one, but was unsure about both. Back in those days, export plates could only be obtained from government-controlled currency exchange offices. We unscrewed the plates from the car, handed them over and then received a set of blank plates with stick-on characters to form the export plate. I only forgot one important thing: we didn’t have anything to drill holes into these new plates! As we were far away from any tool shop, we had to use the only tool I brought along: a screwdriver with a replaceable bit on its tip. Both me and Ian were busy for at least fifteen minutes per plate to create a hole large enough, but it got the job done!

 

We mounted the plates to the car and Ian dropped me off at the nearest train station. Ian would arrive early Sunday morning in Harwich (UK) and had to drive across the UK to the western part of Wales to make it to the next ferry to Ireland. He made it in time without any issues at all.

 

Does the story end here? No not really. Ian got busy fixing up a couple of things on the car: installing coilovers, a set of bolt-on fenders, side skirts and a set of classic SSR wheels.

 

A few weeks passed and then disaster happened: there was a track day and both Ian’s Group A car and drift car were too loud to compete. So he decided to drive his new daily driver on the track. From what I recall, he hit a guardrail and flipped the car on its roof.

 

I thought that would be the end of the car, but Ian managed to revive the roofline. As the car was no longer good enough for a daily driver, he painted it in flat matte green and installed a roll cage.

 

Do note that he installed an ordinary roll cage, not one that gets welded to the chassis. This is important because the next time he drove the car on a track day it skewed on the first skids he made. From what he told me, the structural rigidity of the roof was gone and the whole bodywork flexed. If he had used a roll cage that would be welded to the A, B and C pillars, this wouldn’t have happened.

 

Patching up wasn’t enough as the car skewed itself through the first fast corner

With a useless shell, Ian decided to throw the towel in the ring and sold the car for parts to one of his mates called Mouwt. Mouwt drove a second-generation Daihatsu Charmant and he wanted to make it go a bit faster. A Daihatsu Charmant is a subcompact car by Daihatsu that was initially built upon the Corolla E20 floorplan and the second-generation upgraded to the E70 floorplan. The AE86 is a slightly adjusted E70 floorplan, so they should be more or less compatible. Some second-generation Daihatsu Charmants already feature a 4A-C engine, but Mouwt’s didn’t. However, with the entire subframe of the AE86 present, the 4A-GE swap is a “relatively” easy job that could be performed on one’s driveway. I put relatively here between quotes as it would still require a ton of work.

 

Mouwt simply parked both cars next to each other and started swapping parts from one to another.

 

Of course, the rear axle also had to be swapped.

 

The most important step would be to install the entire driveline including the gearbox. This meant he had to swap the clutch-pedal assembly as well as the Charmant has a cable-operated clutch while the AE86 has a hydraulic-operated clutch. It took him a few weeks to complete, but he managed to get the job done.

 

This is a video of the engine running:

I once had many plans to restore my AE86 to its former glory, so how did I feel about what happened to it? On one hand, I was very sad my old AE86 had suffered this terrible fate, but on the other, I was actually very happy it was being reused. I already jokingly called it a Frankenstein car because its engine and interior were sourced from various other cars. I already knew the shell was very rusty (at the bottom) and it probably wouldn’t survive unless someone would perform a full body restoration. In 2007 and 2008, restoring these cars simply wasn’t financially viable as you could, back then, still buy relatively rust-free examples for a few thousand Euros. And there was still a supply of good rust-free cars back then. Fast forward 16 years and today a shell like this would have been repaired and reinforced because its value is simply tenfold of what it was back then.

This marks the end of the stories I have about my first AE86, so next up will be the start of the COAL Carina series.