One of our favorite cars at the Tokyo Auto Salon was the TOM’s Heritage AE86. Essentially, it’s a fully restomodded Toyota Corolla Levin from the top Toyota tuning house in Japan. Their goal was to retain the spirit and feel of the original Hachiroku, but give it just enough updates so that it can be driven without issue in modern road and traffic conditions. Now TOM’s has published a video documenting the work that went into the demo car displayed at Makuhari Messe.
The total cost for the TOM’s Heritage is around $83,000 USD if you supply your own AE86 (0r $103,500 if you need them to source it), and the video shows what a potential customer receives for that kind of coin. And considering the amount of work that went into it, it’s probably worth every yen.
Just the labor to strip the car down to bare metal and fixing any rust on the chassis can put a project deep into the five-digit range. TOM’s did that, stitch welded it, and repainted the whole car. As they explain in the video, they even painted the undercarriage a slightly darker tone than the body, because it looks out of place if the bottom side is too shiny.
Visually, it looks like a well-preserved, lightly modded AE86 in order to maintain the look of the original. Most of the modernizing upgrades have all been hidden from view. For example, TOM’s used 3D scanning and CFD (computational fluid dynamics) flow analysis to create 3D-printed underbody panels that improve aerodynamics while keeping the factory body lines.
Interior fabrics have also been replaced with material as close to the original as TOM’s could find, but with urethane material to improve durability. Each piece is cut and sewn by hand and fitted to the seats and door panels.
At the heart of the build is a TOM’s tuned 5-valve 4AG with race-derived internals. TOM’s also converted the distributor ignition to direct injection and installed ITBs. The engine was bench tested with an output that’s been bumped from 165 to 195 ps, which is plenty for street use in a car as light as the AE86.
All this work, performed by the premier Toyota tuning shop in the world, no less, to hand the customer a turn-key car that can last for decades to come. That seems like a pretty good deal to us.
