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The Toyota AE-86 Corolla
Performance car on a budget

Back in 1983, Toyota in Japan started to make the last of the rear wheel drive Corolla's, the AE-86 model. The production run kept going until mid 1987, but even though the car was produced is relatively small numbers, it gradually became more and more popular as a budget performance car. They only come with a relatively small capacity 1.6 litre 4AGE twin cam 16 valve engine and a live axle rear end, but due to the great following it has been highly developed as a racing car, rally car, and high performance road car. This page is intended to mainly show the car in a more standard trim, but also include a few of the performance options that are available from many different manufacturers & the parent company, Toyota and its sports division, TRD. (Toyota Racing Development)
 

The AE-86 comes in two basic body shapes, the coupe and a two-door sedan shape

They also come with two shaped noses, a 'straight' nose and a 'pop-up headlight' nose. Both types are common in Japan, while in Australia we only got the straight nose, and in the US they got only the pop-up headlight type. The pop-up headlight type is often called a 'Trueno' (pro 'troo-no') though it is an identical car.

There's also two types of front bumper bars, one that has the indicators in the front, and the other that has them in the front corners. There are three types of indicator/parker lenses as well. Note that the corner lens types are mainly found on the pop-up headlight type cars.

As far as radiator grilles go, there's four of them. Well, five if you count the pop-up headlight model, but it only has a very small grille. The most common grille for the straight headlight model is the 'finned' or 'louvered' type. They are common in Japan and Australia, and look like this -

The other three are a more 'solid' type, and only have a small slot to let the air in. (Most of the radiator air comes in through the hole underneath the bumper bar) The two most common types are basically the same, the only difference is that one has small fog lights at the ends of the translucent plastic. They may or may not have the work 'LEVIN' on them.

The last grille of the solid type is a special one that looks a lot like the previous two, but the air slot is opened and closed by a thermostat of some sort. Here it is with the slot in the open and closed position.

For the rear end, there's a few types of tail lights, but only a couple are common. The top two are the two common types, with the one on the top right  being common in Australia and the top left one common in the US. (with each type only available in each country) Apologies for the black & white pic, but it's the only one that I could find that had all the tail lights in the same picture.

The third type, (2nd from top, left hand side) which is only found in Japan on 1986 model AE-86's, is pretty hard to find at all, and so is a 'hot item' for many AE-86 owners. Here's a colour pic of one. Apparently they only came out on some of the 1986 models.

There's not much variation on the inside of the car, the only options being air conditioning, climate control, and power steering.

Standard dashboard and instrument panel

Climate control panel - rare!

Electronic instrument panel type

The ugly (IMHO) electric instrument panel

On to the mechanical side of the AE-86 Corolla

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