By Speedhunters

Car Culture At Large

One of the more overlooked cars in the Toyota Corolla lineage is the TE72 liftback. This car came out in the USA from 1980 to 1983 (technically, it started in 1979.5 and ran a little into 1984) , and was the predecessor to the beloved AE86. This month, we’ve been featuring some pretty cool TE71/AE71 sedans, but I wanted to draw a little more attention to the TE72 liftback/hatchback version. If you look at the three rear windows, the roofline, and front fenders (well, you can’t see the fender detail exactly on this particular car because it has big fiberglass fender flares that have been molded/bondoed onto the original body steel), then you can see that this car has some very similar lines to the AE86 hatchback. I suppose you could say that this is the “father” (or uncle?) of the AE86. Continue reading at Speedhunters

By Antonio Alvendia

Ryan is in the middle of a pretty ambitious restomod project on his ’75 Corolla. It recently got fresh Jaguar British Racing Green paint, and now he mostly just has to put it all back together. Be sure to check out his ride page!

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Not everyone’s going to get to win our Amoco Ultimate Your Car Is Worth It Photo Contest, but there’s a ton of awesome and hilarious rides among the entries that at least deserve to be called out. Here’s yet another tricked-out Corolla, this one the non-US Seca liftback. The owner has put a lot of elbow grease into getting his originally stock ride the way he wants it. Doesn’t the flamework on the hood kind of remind you of an 80′s Firebird’s big chicken? Here’s what the owner says about it:

Well i bought this car back at the beginning of 2007 as a 17 year old and was my first car. It was completely stock. Now as i work 2 jobs, one as retailer and another with my dad, i have been able to save enough money to do up my corolla seca. I have done everything from body work, right through to engine work (4agte). It is my pride and joy and every penny i earn goes towards it. It runs on octane 98 and chews through alot of petrol but is the most fun to cruise around in

There are still more chances to win, so if you haven’t already thrown your hat into the ring, make sure to enter the Amoco Ultimate Your Car Is Worth It Photo Contest!

The photos that have been submitted to the Amoco Ultimate "Your Car Is Worth It" contest are awesome, but there are a few that I want to call out for a kind of honorable mention. Maybe there wasn’t enough car in the pic, or there was something else whacky, but the photography was top notch. Like this one from entry #480: it features what has to be the weirdest (some say ugliest) wheel ever produced—the Arrelli Assassin—mounted on a true paragon of automotive performance—a Toyota Corolla—with what looks like a sprig of broccoli in the distance—it’s a tree. The wheel’s owner has a great sense of humor, and a real eye for a photograph, too. Nice shot!

There are still more chances to win, so if you haven’t already thrown your hat into the ring, make sure to enter the Amoco Ultimate Your Car Is Worth It Photo Contest!

During the Drift Office demo at Pacific Raceways on Friday I caught a ride with Bobby Rice in his nicely prepped AE86. As you can see in the pics, this car looks a lot cleaner than most drift cars, though Bobby doesn’t baby the thing. He has about $15,000 invested in it so far, and has gotten a lot of help from Bob and the rest of the crew at Drift Office. I got some crummy in-car video of my ride–going up and coming back down. As you can see we spun out both times, which was pretty hilarious. Here’s another video I shot earlier in the afternoon of Bobby ripping through the s curves. Thanks for the ride, Bobby! I have a bunch more pics of Bobby’s AE86 after the jump.

Continue reading "Riding With Bobby Rice" »

The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy—whew, say that three times fast!—just released a list of the greenest and meanest cars in America, and on the green side, Toyota’s Prius came up a big, fat loser. Sorry. It actually came in second, behind Honda’s greener-than-Kermit-the-Frog-on-a-lilly pad Civic GX, which runs on compressed air. As expected, small cars and hybrids make up the remainder of the green list, and also as expected, the rides on the mean list look way, way more fun. The VW Tourage—with the CFC-belching diesel V10—took the top "honors," while dream machines like Bugatti’s Veyron and Lamborghini’s Murcielago came in at numbers two and six, respectively. Of course, neither one of those models probably sees 1/10 the annual miles a Ford Focus—number nine on the green list—does, so in reality, they probably pollute a lot less. But whatever, check out the full breakdown over at Wired.

We had over 1,300 people enter our Trade For Our Scion contest and there were a ton of cool cars to choose from (though not everyone managed to follow directions, so quite a few were disqualified right out of the gate). So why did we pick Jonathon’s AE86? Well, for one, we like AE86s. Plus, he’s got a great ride page with an impressive list of mods. And it definitely helped that he’s a CarDomain regular (and member since July, 2006). Oh, and he followed the directions. So Jonathon, we hope you have fun with your new Scion. I’m sure we’ll have fun with your Corolla!

The Toyota Corolla AE86 arrived in the states in 1984 and was the 5th generation of the Corolla series. The AE86 wears the SR5 and GT-S (1985 and up) badge in the Corolla family, and is known as a great and inexpensive sports coupe. The AE86 was known as the "Levin" (fixed headlight body style) and the "Trueno" (flip-up headlight body style) in Japan, and in the States it’s not uncommon to hear them referred to as their JDM names by enthusiasts. Another common name for the AE86 is the Hachi Roku, derived from Japanese numbers eight (hachi) and six (roku). The AE86 has seen action in many racing series throughout it’s production life, from rally to circuit races, and today the Hachi-Roku’s popularity (and resale value) has recently risen thanks to the increasing popularity of the Drift scene and race series like Forumla D and D-1 Grand Prix.
This old school sport compact will always be a favorite of JDM enthusiasts. Art’s 85 Hachi is super clean and features many imported JDM parts to keep his GT-S in true JDM spirit. However, Bernard’s 86 AE86 is pure sex. He swapped in a potent supercharged motor from an MR2, as well as a long laundry list of other mods. But I have to give big props to burm697 for his amazing Levin sporting a rare TRD wide-body kit! Want to see more of these hot JDM sport compacts? Try searching the Levins, Truenos, and Corollas on CarDomain.

Here at CarDomain, Art is the latest staff member to be visited by the new-car stork: check out this cool 1971 Corolla he picked up last week. Art says the body is a little beat, though the editorial staff thought it looked pretty okay when we encountered it parked on the street while out for lunch on Friday.  It’s also running some aftermarket fender flares that look better in person than they do in the pics, and a clean 1.6 with a side-draft carb, a setup that I’ve been trying to get Art to promise not to change.  Drop by his new page and tell him to write something about his plans for this sweet little ride!