Project Corolla

Impulse makes you do stupid things. Although I spent months contemplating the purchase of the right budget track car to help me get my NASA racing license, over the course of an hour, I got talked into buying a car old enough to drink. For a sum of $2500, I acquired a real gem, a 1985 Corolla GT-S.

Although I had considered the GT-S as a solid option for a street-legal track car, the reliability of cars like the EG Civic, Nissan S13, Mazda Miata and early RX-7 was far more appealing. But there was a caveat for each. The Miata couldn't carry a set of race tires internally and needed a roll bar, the S13's stock truck motor wouldn't last long under track conditions (and an SR was out of the question), and rotary engines were even more of a headache. It seemed I was destined for a Corolla or Civic. In a choice between price and platform, my shallow pockets and affinity for simple rear-drive cars won out.

I thought I knew what I was getting into. I had seen the car before and knew it was rough, but I thought it would be a relatively pain-free process to turn it into a street-legal weekend track beater. Contrary to my simpleton delusions, my GT-S was not a turnkey track car. In fact, it wasn't even a GT-S. The body was originally a carbureted SR5 with the 1.6-liter fuel injected twin-cam 4AGE motor from a first-gen MR2 thrown in. But it had all the right parts: the motor, ECU, harness, disc brakes, factory LSD and fuel system for the EFI setup. It even came with a Whiteline Panhard rod, Tokico sport dampers, and was already half lowered with cut springs in the front. What a deal.

Track Ready Restoration

I knew this car was bad news the moment the rear view mirror came off in my hand. I was prepared for new pads (maybe rotors), plugs, wires, and lots of lube. What I wasn't prepared for was a car that ran on only half its cylinders and an exhaust leak the size of a grapefruit. I don't know if that was more surprising or that fact that it made it all the way home on the night I picked it up.

So began a month's-worth of phone calls, parts searching and grease-covered weekends. I started with the usual fluid changes and maintenance part replacements. The two misfiring cylinders were on account of bad injectors - which were just replaced with spares scoured from various Corolla junkies - while plugs and ignition components came from the local Toyota dealer. It all sounds simple in retrospect, but troubleshooting and finding parts for even such a simple car takes a good day or two of time. Not to mention hunting down electrical bugs in 20-year-old wiring.

K&N Filters and Magnaflow provided the open element intake (PN 57-9000) and exhaust parts for a temporary solution to get past the California-mandated smog test. Instead of wasting megabucks on an exotic exhaust the stock cams couldn't take advantage of, I took Project Corolla down to MufflerMan in Placentia, California, to weld together a makeshift exhaust using Magnaflow's two-inch, pre-OBDII, direct-fit, high-flow cat (PN: 23886) and a six-inch cylindrical satin-stainless muffler (PN: 12640) with a straight-through design. The hack-job exhaust the Corolla came with made the direct-fit cat not so direct, so I had the flanges cut off and the entire assembly welded together, with a MufflerMan louvered resonator thrown in. Not knowing how low the car would sit once I put in some proper suspension bits, I decided to give myself some room to maneuver and route the rear exhaust piping above the live axle, just like stock. Magnaflow threw in a dual-wall polished tip (PN: 35125) to add some class to the setup. Had they seen the car, I very much doubt if they'd have bothered.