Prequel To My Cars Of A Lifetime

BMW 2002 similar to my grandfather’s 02 – Press photo by BMW

I have been enjoying the various COAL series on Curbside Classic for the past few years and have finally made the step to share my stories and memories of my cars. I’m a middle-aged man living near Amsterdam in the Netherlands and, as far as I can remember, I have always been a car enthusiast. However, before sharing any of my own cars, I need to provide some background information on my family and me first. Why did I become a car enthusiast? Who inspired me? What has formed my taste?

Unlike most people, my dad wasn’t the one fueling my love for cars. My father considered cars a tool and all he cared for was that they had four wheels. Instead, it was my grandfather (from my mom’s side) who put 3 or 4-year-old me in the rear seat of his BMW 2002 while he was fettling with the engine. Whilst he was raising the engine revs, I was “driving” in the back seat and my grandfather’s glass cleaning wiper for foggy windows was my imaginary gearstick. Unfortunately, my grandfather’s eyesight deteriorated quickly around this time and the 02 was passed on to my mother. My mother owned the 2002 for another six years, during which it was patched up and received a respray from my stepfather. I’ll feature the 02’s complete story in a future post.

1983: My dad owned two diesel-powered Peugeot 304 station wagons

Circling back to my dad: like I said earlier, he wasn’t interested in cars at all. All he cared for was a car getting from A to B. He used to be a contractor which meant he hauled all sorts of building materials. After selling his Mercedes TN light truck in 1982, he used his family station wagon for hauling all sorts of building materials. This meant that his cars would receive a heavy beating on a daily basis and last on average about 3 years. Near the end of 1985, he traded in his white Peugeot 304 diesel station wagon at a local Subaru dealership and walked out the door with a two-year-old Toyota Carina station wagon that had been converted to run on liquid petrol gas. The Carina wagon proved to be a well-built car and managed to survive my dad for six years. Back in those days, young me couldn’t stop complimenting Toyota to my friends in the schoolyard. Naturally, they weren’t impressed at all and all they cared for were Porsches, Ferraris and Lamborghinis. And maybe a Maserati Bi-turbo. I’ll definitely feature my dad’s cars in a future post as it was an interesting mixed bunch with oddballs like a Romanian ARO 10 4×4.

My father’s ARO 10 looked similar to the one in this press photo but featured a bullbar and a winch – Press photo by ARO

When I reached the age of 18 (our legal age to drive), I couldn’t wait to get my driving license, but in the Netherlands obtaining a license is a very difficult endeavour. Back in the mid-1990s, you had to take at least driving 20 lessons and perform a difficult exam including special tasks like parallel parking and driving off from a standstill on a sloped hill. Being a broke lad, I postponed this until after my studies. When I obtained my bachelor’s degree, I got my first job and started to take driving lessons.

With an underpowered car, winning is easy if you can drive through chicanes at full throttle

Unlike many of my contemporaries, I wasn’t lusting after exotic Italian, Teutonic German or American muscle cars. During my studies, I had been playing way too many games. Instead, me and my friends owned Sony PlayStations and Sega Dreamcasts and I played games like Gran Turismo and Sega GT franticly. I started to like to drive with underpowered cars and see how I could beat my previous lap times by tinkering with the settings and tuning the engine. As both games had their origins in Japan, most cars I chose were Japanese. At the same time, I (cough) downloaded and watched some obscure Japanese anime series about a certain car with a black-white paint scheme. Guess what, this car was available in my favourite game and this only fueled my interest in trying to beat the competition with a fairly ordinary-looking underpowered car called the AE86.

2004: our hotel in Lauf (Germany) vacation en route to Hungary with the 1991 Mitsubishi Colt

Somewhere around the same time, I was walking home from the supermarket when I heard a familiar sound: someone in the parking lot started up their white European spec Corolla GT coupé AE86 and I remember it even had a roll cage installed. I was astonished and baffled at the same time: it never crossed my mind that these cars had been sold in my home country as well! When I passed the test, I immediately set out to find my dream car. I found a couple of them for sale, but they were nowhere near the money I could pay and I settled for a humble 1991 Mitsubishi Colt with a bunch of dents instead. I used this car to get some experience and promised myself my second car would be an AE86.

2005: My first AE86 on the day I bought it

In the meantime, I convinced one of my best mates to buy an AE86. Together we founded the AEU86 forums, the European counterpart of Club4AG. It turned out there were a good number of like-minded people out there and they all owned or wanted to own an AE86. Two years later, via another member at AEU86, I was able to purchase my first AE86: a USDM SR5 that had been converted to GT-S spec using the guts of a European AE86 that had wrapped itself around a tree. I’ll also feature the full story on this car in a separate COAL post.

Two years later, my girlfriend became pregnant with our eldest son. I managed to source some three-point rear seatbelts from a German AEU86 user in the correct blue colour. However, it didn’t matter how hard I tried, the Maxi Cosi baby seat simply wouldn’t fit in the rear seat of the AE86. I tried to convince my girlfriend she had to take the rear seat, but if you have ever had the privilege to sit in the rear of an AE86 and be over 1.5 meters, you generally don’t like to make a habit out of that. So that was a plain and simple “no”.

The day I inspected the Toyota Carina TA60, the tail light of the AE86 on the far right

So what does a responsible soon-to-be-father do then? Search for an equivalent! At first, I tried to source a four-door Toyota Corolla KE70 but those seemed to be nearly impossible to find back then. Instead, I was able to find myself a 1982 Toyota Carina DX TA60. There was only one issue with it: it had an automatic gearbox. Regardless of that, I still bought the Carina and it stuck with me for 17 years! This is going to be my main COAL feature and it’s going to be in multiple installments.

I recently sold the Carina and now that the Carina is gone, I have filled the hole it left with another AE86. It’s almost identical to my first one, albeit having the steering wheel on the other side as it’s a Japanese import.

My new AE86 is a Japanese import and also has a very interesting history

So with the prequel being done, what can you expect in my COAL series? I’ll start chronologically with a post about my (first) AE86 ownership, then post about what happened to it and then move on to the Carina series. I can’t wait to get started on this!