Pop-up headlights, a twin-cam engine that screamed past 7,000 revs and rear-wheel drive. The Toyota Corolla AE86 — the Corolla Sport, SR5 and GT-S you drove in the 1980s — stopped production in 1987. Almost forty years later, a factory three hours north of Shanghai is stamping brand-new AE86 bodies, panel by panel, weld by weld.
In this documentary we tell the whole story: how a sensible Corolla became the “hachi-roku” legend, why Toyota saved the 4A-GE engine with GR Heritage Parts but never made new bodies, how Jiangsu Juncheng builds a complete AE86 shell from more than 300 stamping dies, the honest problems with the first prototype — and whether you can actually build one and drive it on American roads.
CHAPTERS:
0:00 The Little Coupé That Refused To Die
1:52 Eight-Six: The Corolla That Kept Its Rear Wheels
5:08 The Decade Toyota Took Over America
7:30 How A Cheap Corolla Became A Legend
10:45 Toyota Saves The Engine, But Not The Body
13:04 Inside The Chinese Factory Building New Corollas
17:07 Can You Legally Drive One In America?
20:24 The Country That Never Had It Is Saving It
Did you own a Corolla in the 1980s? Would you build one on a brand-new body from China? Tell us in the comments.
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