"You must find balance," the Zen Master told young Hachi-Roku. "But I have nearly perfect balance," replied the Hachi, "53.4 percent front to 46.6 percent rear." "No!" the Zen Master interrupted, "in order to attain driving nirvana, you must find total balance. Your tires must match your suspension. Your brakes must match your engine. Your speed must match your styling." The Hachi pleaded: "Speed? Styling? But I'm a mid 80's Toyota Corolla." After a brief pause, the Zen Master conceded: "OK, you got me there."
To members of AE86 cults, fans of Initial D, and the guy that designed the '86 Accord, the lines on the 1984-87 Corolla are beautiful. To the rest of society, the hachi-roku is not known for its looks. Sadly, it's not known for its speed, either. The faster GT-S models did well in Showroom Stock racing 20 years ago, but the old cars are backmarkers these days. Even in the drifting community, hachi drivers are considered especially skilled because it is difficult to drift such a slow car.
It's not that the car is bad. By today's standards, it's lightweight. The chassis isn't super-rigid, but there are plenty of bolt-on pieces to fix that. Disc brakes were available at all corners, and it has a front engine/rear-wheel drive layout. The Corolla is a great platform, with one exception: the engine.
The 4AGE motor from the US-spec GT-S was rated at 115bhp. Subtract the drivetrain loss and power loss from 20 years of cheap gas and most drivers wouldn't even be able to tell the cars are rear-wheel-drive.
There are fast hachis out there. They use everything from newer 20-valve JDM motors to old Toyota Formula Atlantic motors. Recently, some left-wing AE86 cult members have even begun using F20C motors from Honda's S2000. This swap is considered sacrilege by most of the AE86 community. So of course, we're into it. After testing a V8-powered FD RX-7 a couple of months ago, this bastard swap was right up our alley.
The good people at Techno Toy Tuning (T3) towed their bastard F20C-powered hachi down from Northern California to Buttonwillow Raceway for us to run our usual tests.
For comparison, the guys at Sportcar Motion of San Diego, California, brought a mildly modified 2.2-liter 2004 S2000, while engineering editor, Jay Chen, turned up with a nicely prepared 4AGE-powered hachi from... well, I'm not sure. I think he stole it.
GripThe surface of the skidpad at Buttonwillow is more pitted and rutted than the face of the average Extreme Makeover contestant. So while the numbers we recorded are useful for comparison between these three cars, they aren't good for much else.
The stolen Corolla ran effortlessly around the 200-foot circle with just a hint of understeer and pulled off an average of 0.89g on its Falken Azenis RT-215 tires. The S2000 generated the same average lateral grip on its less grippy Toyo T1-R tires (even though we had requested the same tires as the other two). It would wander a bit when it went through the bumps, which cost some speed through the skidpad. This was probably due to it being the only car of the three without roll center adjusters (aka bump steer correctors). The F20C bastard was the liveliest of the group. The bumps would kick the back end out pretty severely, but the extreme steering angles available from the modified steering rack made it easy to catch. It was the fastest of the group, but not by much, averaging only 0.92g.
...
>>next page