There are so many questions I have about this Levin AE86:
This Levin AE86 suits me fine!
It has a GT-S door sticker. Where did it come from?
It has correction stickers for the headlights going from LHD to RHD while the dashboard is on the RHD side. If it were a RHD car I would expect it to be the other way around!
There seem to be traditional Chinese writings on the wall of this garage / gas station
It has a kouki grill and zenki bumper and the car appears to be a kouki model.
So what’s going on here? The traditional Chinese writing on the wall would place this car either in Taiwan, Macau or Hong Kong. Cars drive on the right side (so LHD) in China and Taiwan and on the left side (RHD) in Hong Kong and Macau. I could explain the LHD headlights if this person lived in mainland China or Taiwan. So my best guess would be that this Levin used to be owned by someone living in China mainland or Taiwan and he was visiting Hong Kong or Macau.
That still doesn’t explain the GT-S door sticker and the zenki bumper though.
AE86 wall of shame: OG Poser Mobile on the actual set
The AE86 Wall of Shame can’t be complete without today’s entry: the Poser Mobile AE86! This is probably the cherry on top of the cake! The creme-de-la-creme of the Wall of Shame!
So if you aren’t already familiar with the Poser Mobile AE86, the video below will explain it all to you. In a nutshell: in 2005 T-Mobile tried to enter the US mobile phone market. Their campaign revolved around a gang of posers which were clearly from Asian decent that show up in a Sex-Spec AE86 when you’re out of pre-paid minutes. Think of the Bollywood version of The Fast and The Furious. Why they chose this ad is unclear, but either the Asian-Americans were their target group or they were trying to take the piss out of them. Better judge for yourself in their ad:
Over the past years I have created a vast collection of AE86 photos. Within this collection I managed to isolate some contenders that I would consider to be part of the wall of shame. At one of my jobs we featured a so called customer wall of shame, where customers would send weird and funny emails to customer services. So yeah, this new section will be my AE86 wall of shame which fill feature the weird and funny AE86es that I encountered over the past years.
AE86 Wall of Shame: Corolla GT-S with a Levin complex
Today I kick off with this USDM Toyota Corolla GT-S AE86 which has a Levin complex. We all know how much we like the forbidden fruits. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The United States and Canada had to do without the fixed headlamps that featured on the Levin. On the other side of the pond in Europe we craved for the USDM popup headlights. Naturally the owner of this Corolla GT-S loved the looks of a Levin AE86 or a European Corolla GT AE86 and then used some clever DIY to make his/her own version of it!
As I said earlier today (I’m in a different timezone): if I encounter more nice cars I’ll definitely post them. So how about a well used Toyota Corolla AE86 GT-S in the Milpitas Wallmart parkinglot?
While I was taking this photo the owner returned (hence this photo turned out not entirely sharp) and I had a short chat with him. He told me he is on the verge of buying a Scion FR-S as he is tired of continuously repairing an old and tired car. He offered me the car for sale but I friendly declined the offer. It will simply not fit in my suitcase and I guess my wife will kill me if I returned home and explained I just paid a fortune to ship a car to Europe. ;)
From every angle you can see that the sunny weather in California isn’t doing any good to the car: Continue reading
Just spotted this one on Jalopnik and thought it is well worth to share: the new 2014 USDM Corolla never get out of style and Toyota proves this with a commercial that shows you every decade is full of Corolla. For instance the 70s is full of KE35:
And apparently the 80s is full of Herbie Hancock’s Rockit with a real fine USDM Corolla GT-S AE86 which got its front bumper periodically correct replaced by a kouki JDM item and a skate girl dancing on top of its roof… Did Toyota fail to find a genuine example? ;)
Earlier I featured the AE86 GT-Apex Digi Dash and obviously, it raises many AE86 enthusiasts’ hearts. This time I’d like to feature the normal analogue AE86 gauge cluster versus the AE85 gauge cluster. In case you feel you have a deja vu by now: you are completely right about that! I did post the AE86 gauge clusters earlier but reposted it once again with additional information.
AE86 gauge clusters
If you ever owned an AE86 (or watched too much Initial D) these clusters should be quite familiar. There are two types of clusters for the AE86: left-hand drive (LHD) and right-hand drive (RHD). The layout of these clusters has been mirrored: on the LHD the tachometer is on the left side of the cluster, while on the RHD that spot is taken by the speedometer. Also, the warning lights, fuel, water temperature and oil pressure gauges all have been mirrored.
JDM AE86 gauge clusters
the GT Apex cluster and the GT / GT-V cluster. They appear to be identical, however, they do have subtle differences.
The zenki (early) AE86 GT Apex gauge cluster features the speedometer on the left and the tachometer on the right. As the Japanese government mandated speedometers to be limited to 180 km/h since the 1970s, the speedometer has a different scale than all export models. The gauge cluster features a fuel meter on next to the speedometer and oil pressure and water temperature gauges next to the tachometer. On the left and right we also find several warning lights, but I’ll get into that later. In the middle between the speedometer and tachometer, we find the two indicator lamps. Below the tachometer, we find the high-beam indicator light.
On the speedometer and tachometer scales we see intermediate steps about 2/3rds width of the full steps. Also the speedometer features the scale in yellow/orange on speeds above 100 km/h.
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