During the early part of the 1980s, many compared Toyota to General Motors, the accolades coming thanks to the Japanese brand’s ability to release a dozen different flavors of the same basic model. Toyota’s noble goal was to build a car for everyone.
A fine example of this thought process is the Corolla econobox, which at the time could be had …
All in the Family
“I started autocrossing five years ago with a 1988 Supra Turbo,” Rick explains. The car had good power, but it was a little heavy for his tastes. Plus it was getting expensive to maintain, he adds. Rick figured that an early-’80s Corolla would make a better alternative.
“I found two cars for $250, one two-door sedan and one two-door hatchback,” he says. “I originally wanted to do the hatch, but the looks of the sedan grew on me and I thought that the balance might be better on the sedan.”
The promise of low-cost parts was one of the things that drew Rick to the Corolla, but he soon felt that the little 1.8-liter, 3TC-spec engine was in need of more power. The discount aspect went out the window when he installed a race-ready, high-compression engine.
Total bill for that little project: $6000. On the plus side, it did outperform the stock engine by nearly a hundred horsepower. “This provided good results,” he says of his 170-horsepower screamer, “but it required race gas and inevitably detonated.”
It was now time for Rick to try something less highly strung and, at the same time, even more radical. He had set his sights on the SCCA’s Street Modified autocross class, which meant there was lots of leeway with respect to choosing a new engine. Dust off your law degree and ponder the following Street Mod snippet from the SCCA Solo rulebook:
“Engine block must be a production unit manufactured and badged the same as the original standard or optional engine for that model. Badges that exist as marketing aliases for the manufacturer will be recognized as equivalents.”
From a Street Modified perspective, the only thing that mattered regarding engine selection was the name on the valve cover. Absolutely any Toyota engine would be legal for the class, regardless of its era or origin. Better yet, as Lexus is a marketing alias for Toyota in the U.S., even bigger advantages were available.
Some Internet research revealed that the Lexus V8 could be…
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