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My ‘67 Mercury Cougar. It was originally sold in Beverly Hills CA in the first day Cougars were available for sale 10/1/1966. The second owner customized it with wheel flares and body mods. I am the third owner and have rebuilt or upgraded almost everything mechanical on the car. Its a lot of fun.
 

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Love it. Purchased one of these Corolla GTs new, back in the day. Had all the black trim items (bumpers, mirrors, spoilers, side rubbing strips) colour-coded in white before it left the dealership. Wife Jen drove a new mk1 MR2 with same engine, but mid-mounted. I still preferred my GT. These Corolla GTs are now ridiculously expensive here in the UK. Last couple of Jap imports I saw advertised were well into the UK£20k bracket. If only I'd kept it....
You were so lucky to get the GT in the UK. We only got the hairdresser's version downunder with the carburetted single cam engine and drum brake rear end. I still have a second hand Japanese import with the pop up light front that I bought in 1994 to race. I raced it for 5 years before pulling it apart to build it into a dedicated race car. When I first built it I fitted a heavy steel roll cage, yellow koni shocks, higher rate springs, TRD race LSD, a straight through 2” exhaust and mild cams to the standard engine. It was a simple package that surprised a lot of drivers in more powerful cars. As you would know these little rockets were all about cornering and braking. In 1994 I had it dyno'd and that little 1.6L 4AG engine made 125hp at the rear wheels and amazingly it was still making power at the 7800rpm cutout.

In the last event I competed in, the scrutineers put me in the same class as five Lotus 7 replicas weighing less than 600kg, 4 of which had the same 16v 4AGE engine as my car. The 5th one had the later more powerful 20v 4AG engine. I protested stating my car weighed 1050kg and was basically a standard Corolla RWD twin cam that I drove to the track unlike all of the 7's which arrived on trailers. They said I should be in the same class as my car was a "Japanese special". Needless to say I wasn't impressed but at the end of the day the only one of the 7's that was faster was the one with the more powerful 20v engine. A few days after the 200km drive home I began pulling the car apart to rebuild it. 20 years later it is sitting in my shed unfinished but with a lightweight extensive cromo cage, late model 20v engine, motec ecu, and highly modified fabricated suspension based on the N2 series cars in Japan. I even have a genuine TRD N2 kit for it like the one in the photo below. I have never finished it for a multitude of reasons, the main one being my racing buddies began racing earlier and got out of it while I was building the car. Hopefully someone will buy it one day, finish and race it.

The silver car I sold had a lot of the parts I pulled from the Japanese Trueno GT however I fitted one of the later high compression bottom ends from a late model FWD corolla under a mildly modified shaved 16v head and early FI system. Those later bottom ends are good for close to 9000rpm stock. I kept the HKS cams but added a lighter flywheel. With the shaved head the compression was at least 11.5:1. You can imagine how quick it got to the rev cutout and the sound!
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My Trueno GT racecar.
 
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Ah, the memories. That's a very interesting history of your ae86GT racers. Bet the look on those Seven driver's faces was priceless. You must finish your red GT. That'll be quite a nice little addition to your pension pot!
Out of curiosity, I searched for UK ae86GTs for sale and came across a pair listed at UK£22k and UK£39k. They've definitely achieved cult status.
 
My baseball coach had a Vista Cruiser in that color combo when I was 9-10 years old. I liked looking up and watching the clouds pass by when he drove.
 
This is so much nostalgia for Matti. One guy in my hood had an AE86, another had a Nissan 200SX Turbo. I always dreamed that they'd duke it out
The only shortcoming of the AE86 was a rust prone body and shortage of horsepower. A mate of mine rectified the the lack of HP by fitting an early Lexus 4L 4 cam V8. The engine cleared the factory crossmember, steering and sway bay. He had to drop the crossmember so the engine would fit under the standard hood. The exhaust was so quiet that you barely hear the burble of the V8 at idle and the cops never bothered him. It didn't handle quite as well as a standard car but the increase in torque made up for it.

One of the funniest stories I can tell about my exploits racing the Trueno GT was a track day held by the Falcon GT club. There were a few serious drivers there in cars with 400+ hp and 2 of them passed me down the long straights but I was all over them in the braking area. After one of my runs I parked the car in the pit lane waiting for another run. A guy comes up to me and says that little thing goes pretty well for a 2L turbo. He was shattered when I told him it had a 1.6L NA twin cam engine to which he replies, bloody heck who built that engine? I reply "Toyota, its a standard engine off the production line in Japan with a pair of mild cams and 2 inch straight through exhaust". He had no idea of the cornering and braking power of the 86.
 
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I'd show you guys the minty Lancer I recently traded my minty Sentra in on but I don't wanna overload this thread with too much cool. lol

It's been too long since I've had a cool/fun second car. Maybe I'll treat myself for my 60th birthday (two more years).
 
This is what I drove in high school.

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My mini truckin' days.

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One of my projects. 1956 Lincoln Premiere.

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One of four dune buggies. The other 3 are still under construction.

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My daily driver.

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My other daily driver.

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My old house when I didn't have a garage. UGH!

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Just got a new project ride. Traded my 2002 Saab 9-3 convertible for a 2005 Mazda 6 sport wagon.
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Going to do a headlight restoration and knock the AutoZone mods off of it and get it up and running good and it will be a sweet ride.
 

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