This car has been through some punishing experiences, yet it's still being used to haul groceries and has yet to fall into the hands of a kid who will howl "Hey y'all, watch this!" as he disappears into a haze of tire smoke. You can tell from the rust around the front body damage that the fender-bender wasn't particularly recent, but it still gets the job done and the owner hasn't had to put bodywork real high on the priority list.


We've seen a couple of other AE86s on the island, including this '85 and this '86, but this is the first one in the series with SR5 badging (and no JDM emblems anywhere to be seen).
This has been a great neighborhood for DOTS sightings; we've seen the '78 Dodge Colt, '87 BMW M6, and- best of all- the very first car in the series was photographed about 20 feet from this Corolla's parking space. And hey, can you spot the '66 Datsun 411 in the photo above?

While the 1970-74 Corollas sold in huge numbers in North America, the TE27 hardtop coupes weren't quite so common, and they're much in demand nowadays. You need to pay real money for a nice one, but $12,800 for a partially-completed restoration? It appears that this '74 is chock-full-o-NOS JDM goodies, and it's a non-rusty California car, so it's possible that no hubba rocks are needed to accept that price. What do you say?
Thanks to Akier for the tip! [Craigslist San Francisco, go here if the ad disappears]

As we all know, the problem with Japanese PCH cars is that parts are too easy to find, the build quality is too high, and Japanese engineers- particularly those working for Nissan, Honda, and Toyota- tend to design them to be easy to work on. Where's the fun there? Send those guys to Europe for a crash course in complexity, then to Detroit for some lessons in bean-counter-driven corner-cutting! But it's still possible to get yourself an inexpensive Japanese project that scores pretty high on the Cool-O-Meter yet will drive you absolutely mad- you just need to find something fashionably fast-and-furious that's had years of dodgy mods and rod-bending abuse… like, say, this 1984 Toyota Corolla SR5 (go here if the ad disappears), which could be yours for an offer probably well below the $1,200 asking. I know what you're saying: why get the 8-valve SR5 when you could have a GT-S with the righteous 4AGE? Hey, this one "needs a piston ring," which is Craigslist-speak for "a terrible noise happens every time I try to start it," so you'll have the opportunity to build your own engine with all the valves and boost a suitcase full of money can buy! And hey, it already comes with the all-important "carbon fiber eyelids" (though you're on your own for the equally important carbon fiber shift knob).


Watch the video above (shot from the Schumacher Taxi Service Corolla) and then try to muster up the usual "wrong-wheel-drive" quips! What you need is a Hell Project that, if when finished, will be a squirming, torque-steering, axle-snapping beast that will require luck as well as skill to keep under any semblance of control! Yes, we mean the AE82 CorollaGT-S, which came with plenty of howling 4A power to go with its weird sketched-by-an-8-year-old 80s-hatchback profile. They're not as easy to find as they once were, but we've spotted this '87 Corolla FX16 GT-S (go here if the ad disappears) with the same asking price as the AE86: $1,200. It has a 20-valve silvertop engine and some quasi-trick parts, but the seller states that the "motor has a blown head gasket which is not much to fix." Now, we often find that "blown head gasket" is Craigslist-ese for "smoke and/or chunks of metal pouring out the tailpipe and/or holes in the oilpan," but maybe that diagnosis is accurate- hey, stranger things have happened! Besides, the seller has a turbocharger "which we can probably work a deal on," so you can see what the logical next step would be.

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