Unboxed Photos: Last shoot with the AE86 - Juiceboxforyou

To be honest, I wish I took more photos of the car in this form before we tore it apart. I guess when you are in the moment you don’t really think of these things. As the car was slowly being torn apart, a little voice from the future came back to remind me that the 86 was never going to look like this again. As fucked as it looked, the car was already cemented into peoples minds like this and long after its restoration, this version will be the car people remember. It was still running and driving, just missing the dash and seats and cage and well everything from the interior. I quickly placed everything inside and brought it out for its final photo shoot.

I was hoping for a sunny day, the day before we shot these was incredible, I guess the overall mood of the car being torn apart later that evening suited the shoot. The little Trueno actually didn’t look too bad here as the water had brought the paint job back to life. I secretly wanted to leave the car like this forever as it oozes with character, trust me if I had endless amounts of money and a whole collection of these cars I probably would have left it alone but sadly I don’t. I took a five grand loan out to build the “dream machine” and this is what I had to work with.

The muscle car era looks good with Patina, sadly the Japanese metal of the eighties is like tinfoil and all these holes and crusty areas were only going to spread. Three fields behind this photograph, you can hear the roaring Atlantic ocean and I’m pretty sure this car wouldn’t stand a chance if it was left untouched.

Either way, I had grown quite fond of its look, Dan’s half-arsed attempt at rubbing down the eighties peeling paint job, one we have come to learn was added to the car along with a left side rear quarter panel after the Trueno was in a pretty bad smash back in the motherland.

The vent was retrofitted from an AE92 Corolla for the top mounted Intercooler setup it used to have, this was also lifted from the AE92 supercharger setup along with the engine, loom and the clocks. This was quite a common transplant throughout the nineties with these cars providing a quick and somewhat cheap power upgrade. Dan had fitted a gigantic intercooler up front which you can just about make out through the front bumper.

I love how original the car actually is, well sort of original, since its time in Ireland, nothing has been done to hide the slowly decaying shell so we could pretty much see everything we were up against, or at least that’s what we thought. The broken motor keeps the left light popped up which gives the car a sort of sad human-like character.

The red lines at the back and the TRD wing were giving hints of the unlocked potential this had. Redlines are my all time favourite rear light for the Trueno, luckily we got a Late spec 87 model which is the one I was ideally always after and came with these tail lights from factory. I’m also a huge fan of that 5-Zigen fireball exhaust, we just have to mount it a little better when it goes back on.

The side profile is not the most flattering with this car. I’ll never understand why Toyota didn’t offer a front lip with the Koki front bumper, from the side profile you can see how the side skirts actually sit lower than the front bumper and its not ideal. A Zenki front lip needs to be retrofitted and its something id definitely think about doing in the future. I love how the front wing is actually in still untouched, you can just about make out the lacquer peel on the arch which is the reason Dan started rubbing the car down in the first place.

The original paint makes an appearance through Dans rub down efforts, the car is screaming to be painted red over black once again, but I’m caught with colours, I keep going back and forth with a few select ideas I have in mind. Luckily as chaotic as the paint looks, at least all the window trims and little exterior bits are still intact, all we had to get for the outside was door locks.

What lies beneath! As I said further up in the post, the layers of history are cool, and if this tin can Toyota had thicker metal like a lot of older hot rods of the 40s and 50s, id probably just ensure the car is mint mechanical wise and leave the exterior as it, I’m not sure how long that would last though, I’m pretty sure anyone would eventually get sick of it.

Dan Tec screwed the TRD rear wing onto the hatch, there is a sea of woodlice and spiders living behind the spoiler. I love how he painted it silver on the car without even masking! What a man.

I’ve kept the bonnet and I’m going to hang it up on the wall, from time to time ill fit it to the car for shits and giggle and bring it to car shows, the hood has enough lacquer peel and original paint to remind me what this thing used to look like. Looking back on these photos in four or five years when the car is long since painted and probably unrecognisable from these photos, ill probably enjoy them that much more.

In these photos, the inside completely matches the outside perfectly, its complete chaos. Knowing id probably never see the car in this condition again, I scrambled to throw everything back in loosely to drive it around the business park one last time and grab some final photos. There is a mixture of two badly cut together looms, one from AE92 FWD supercharged Levin and the original 86.

The interior was actually pretty mint when we picked up the car up, aside from the resident spiders we had to evict, everything was intact. I was quite fond of the old school gauges in the dash setup, its something I like to see in older Japanese cars but I’ve come to learn its not something id like to have in my own one.

The screwdriver of dreams, I do miss starting this thing with a screwdriver. Ill have a cool key to make up for that which you will see in a further episode of the Vlogs.

Bringing it for its final spin, the cage was not bolted in, wires were coming out of everywhere and the car was running like a bag of shite, but guess what? I was still smiling. I can’t wait to put this thing back together.

I miss the sing of the old 4A-GZE setup, the whine was actually something I had wanted since the days of watching Mad max as a kid. Sadly the sound of the Trumpets galloping on the side of a 20valve 4A-GE stole my heart many years later and it’s pretty much all I’ve wanted to do since.

The bay was such a mess, that’s the one thing about the supercharger setup that always annoyed me, It’s just not that attractive when you lift the bonnet. The pipes go everywhere, there is no real way to tidy them up and the bay always looks crowded and somewhat chaotic.

At least we have a few photos of that little pipe we nicknamed nice! The entire bay in this picture is covered in a layer of grime, I’m having flashbacks to the first time we lifted the hood and saw nothing but cobwebs and leaves. It looked like this Trueno would never move under its own weight again. I’m still pretty impressed that we got this car up and running and enjoyed it for the three months it was in one piece, a true testament to eighties Toyota quality.

This was the last web that kept coming back, right up until the night we ripped the car apart. Every other web had long since gone and this once kept appearing week after week. It was the spider’s last stand!

After about twenty minutes of taking photos, I felt like I had enough, I was getting soaked and started losing interest in the shoot. In hindsight, I probably should have taken a few more knowing that this would be the last time I would be hanging out with this version of the Trueno. This is the version everyone remembers, the version we pulled out of the bush.

When the car is finished, it will more than likely look like a completely different car, it may not be as memorable, but at least it will be my version of the dream AE86 I’ve been lusting after for all these years. As much as I enjoyed how this car looked, it was slowly eating away at me, I had to get started on restoring it as soon as I could as I felt the car was hurting. I sound like a bit of a nut job here but I’m sure you know what I mean. I wanted something I could walk into the shed and be proud of, something I can clean on a lazy Sunday and something I can take to the track or a back road and know it’s not going to let me down a car I’ve built from the ground up that will hopefully last me another twenty years.

At least I’ll have the videos and memories to remember how this thing looked before it went under the knife. Hope you enjoyed the cars final shoot.

– Neil