This 1987 Toyota Corolla hatchback, built during the Reagan administration, is listed for sale on eBay with a price tag of $19,000. That places its value higher than a brand new 2016 Corolla equipped with features like airbags and Bluetooth. How could that be?
What we have here, boys and girls, is a unicorn—slightly tainted with a few unwanted holes, but a unicorn nonetheless. The Toyota Corolla GT-S is the American version of the famed AE86, the last of the rear-wheel-drive ‘Rollas. It’s the car that clutch-kicked drifting into a worldwide phenomenon, and even the star of its own anime.
Sold in the U.S. from 1985 to 1987, it quickly became a darling on autocross courses and rally stages. Its lightweight body and quick-revving, twin-cam, fuel-injected engine gave it telepathic driving dynamics.
That, however, was its fate in the United States. In Japan, where 70 percent of the landscape is mountainous, car enthusiasts took them to the hairpin touge roads where handling, not horsepower, mattered. Check out this video from 1989 on Hakone, the most popular of the mountain passes considered the birthplaces of drifting. The AE86s outnumber every other model there.
It was sold as two separate models, the Corolla Levin and Sprinter Trueno—one with fixed headlights and one with 80s-tastic pop-ups. Among enthusiasts, they became known by their Toyota internal chassis code: AE86, abbreviated to Hachiroku, or “eight six” in Japanese.
By the time drifting became a widely known sport in the U.S., circa 1999, most of these cars were 15 years old. With a car that was born to be driven hard, the supply had significantly dwindled. Most remaining examples of the car—most owners saw it as “just a Corolla”—were killed off by an army of drifting newbies.
Surviving models keep coming out of the woodwork, but this one on eBay is the lowest mileage Corolla GT-S I’ve ever seen—in more than a decade of owning, watching the market for, and reporting on these amazing cars.
According to the seller, it spent most of its life sitting in a Toyota dealer’s showroom. It was briefly raced, and as a result has a few holes drilled where a roll cage was once installed. The bumpers have, for some reason, been painted black, all the original decals were removed, and a spoiler was installed—but this is still likely to be the freshest GT-S you’ll ever see.
All of these things can be fixed for about a thousand bucks, if you know a good metal worker and paint shop. It’s a small sacrifice for a Corolla GT-S that’s still got un-faded original paint and a pristine interior that unusually suffers from cracked plastic trim after years of sun exposure.
This car is of historic importance. It’s extremely rare. And when add to that the fact that it was in Japan’s most famous automotive-themed TV program, you can see why nearly 200 eBay users are keeping their eyes on the bidding.
