Why is the Toyota AE86 So Expensive?

Many iconic Japanese cars, the Toyota AE86 included, have seen a hike in price over the past ten years or so, especially performance models such as the Mazda RX-7 FD, Toyota Supra and Nissan Skyline. I remember selling my very own modified R32 GTR for a measly £6,000 in 2012, a fact that I now have to live with and that will haunt me until the day I die. When I bought it I wanted a fast car but I didn’t have a lot of money to spend. At the time the GTR was quite literally the quickest thing I could get my hands on with the paltry amount of money I had been able to stash away in between keeping myself alive and enjoying a few shandies at the weekends. Bought for the same six grand I sold it for it served me well. It was a beast of a thing and I enjoyed many an adventure with it; from tearing down to Le Mans and racing Ferraris on the autoroutes, to removing the AWD fuse in order to teach myself how to drift, as well as learning how to spanner by replacing both turbos. It goes down as one of the best cars I’ve ever owned and If younger (and clearly more stupid) me would have known how much prices would skyrocket in the not so distant future I would have held on to it. But hindsight has always been 20:20, as they say, and you can’t keep them all. At least not I.

Then there’s Vin and the gang. Who’d have thunk that a Point Break rip off with unknown actors would become not only a massive hit but also a huge, global franchise, helping to define and then influence the whole culture upon which it was based. A franchise that’s still going strong today, albeit with less of the culture and way more explosions. It’s fascinating how the media can have such an impact on the price of classics, something that we’ll see again later in this article. These cars were fast, and indeed furious, not to mention reliable. The Skyline mentioned earlier came with a twin-turbo, six-cylinder engine with almost 300 horsepower. It has all-wheel drive and bona fide motorsport credentials – it was, after all, nicknamed Godzilla due to it’s all-conquering performance on track. Likewise, the Supra was available with dual whirly boys and could hit 60mph from parked in under five seconds and the tune-ability of the RX-7’s Wankel engine is legendary, so the appeal, at least from a performance perspective, is clear to see.

But what of the Humble Toyota AE86? It’s a Corolla for heaven’s sake! A small family runabout intended for trips to the supermarket and ferrying kids to and from school, yet it’s a car that commands copious amounts of cash nowadays. It’s not even particularly quick. Unlike the cars listed above it produces just 128bhp from its 1.6-litre, four-cylinder engine but top condition examples, when they actually come up for sale, go for anywhere between £20,000 and £30,000, which, quite frankly, is ridiculous. Car & Classic auctions actually holds the record for the most expensive AE86 ever sold with a price tag of an eye-watering £46,250. This is a car that was less than nine grand when new. To understand this phenomenon then, we have to look at two main contributing factors: supply vs. demand and a Japanese cartoon about a tofu delivery driver. Yes, to those not in the know it does sound rather ridiculous but do hear us out won’t you.

Supply vs. Demand

It’s the age-old story here as far as modern classic cars are concerned. As we get older and generally have more disposable income we have the opportunity to indulge in our passions a little more enthusiastically. For us classic car fans that means we can afford to buy and enjoy the cars that we coveted in our youth that perhaps were prohibitively expensive to own or to insure at the time. Not only that but numbers are constantly dwindling. Obviously these cars are not being made any more and as such, when one gets binned into a tree or totalled at a race track, it doesn’t get replenished. There isn’t a factory churning out fresh models and the AE86 GT represents an incredibly brief moment in time as far as production is concerned.

Let’s not forget either that people want them purely because it’s an inherently good car and an utter joy to chuck about. A well-balanced, lightweight coupé with rear-wheel drive will always be a winning combination, quite literally in the case of the Toyota, and motorsport kudos does wonders for a car’s street cred. With only one generation produced over a two year period between ’83 and ’85 it’s pretty exclusive to boot. We would bet our bottom dollar that if Mazda had stopped making its two seater roadster after the first-gen MX-5 – a similarly revered “driver’s car” – it would be the same story and prices for its diminutive sportster would be hitting record levels today, just like the Toyota AE86.

Another element contributing to the shape of the supply and demand curve is the car’s age. In the United States, regulations stipulate that cars have to be at least 25 years old before they can easily be imported into the country so as soon as these older, desirable JDM cars crest that peak, demand rises. The US is a big place with a huge population, a good percentage of which is very much ensconced in car culture, so when there’s a collective uptake in interest in a certain model, the effects of that rush to buy and import is felt throughout the industry. We’re also seeing a push back against mundane, increasingly autonomous modern cars, whether they be electric or just plain boring. Enthusiasts are craving a more analogue, visceral experience, something that cars like the Toyota AE86 can provide with aplomb.

Initial D

Although people were rallying and doing skids in AE86s long before this hugely celebrated Japanese street racing Manga comic series came out in the mid ’90s, it was the comic (and subsequent anime) that popularised the car and cemented it as a true cultural icon that has become inextricably linked with going sideways. The concept – inspired by the real-world exploits of Japanese “Drift King”, Keiichi Tsuchiya (who also served as technical director for the show) – revolves around the world of illegal Japanese street racing, with most of the skiddy action taking place on the winding passes (or ‘touge’ roads) of the fictional ‘Mount Akina’.

Tsuchiya, a professional racing driver, is credited with pioneering this drift style of racing, perfecting his technique on the twisty mountain roads around the Kantō region of Honshu. As his skills increased, so did his status and having perfected his street racing chops he made his professional debut in ’77, but it wasn’t until the mid ’80s that his unique style of driving came to the fore. Using his AE86 – a top spec Trueno GT-APEX variant – he would begin producing videos showcasing his driving prowess before co-organizing the D1 Grand Prix – the first official drifting event of its kind.

As all eyes began to focus on Tsuchiya and his AE86, the Toyota’s fabled legacy and influence would be forever embedded not just in car culture but popular culture in general when it became the star of Initial D. It was this exposure that brought the car into people’s homes, into the collective consciousness and subsequently on to achieving the legendary status it currently enjoys.

The Toyota AE86 GT isn’t just a bastion of the classic car world, it’s a cultural icon that sits alongside other cars like the DMC DeLorean and VW Beetle for the impact that it has had and when Toyota itself – out of all the possible models it could use from its oeuvre – chooses to modify a pair of AE86s in order to showcase new technologies, that speaks volumes as to how powerful that legacy of the Toyota AE86 really is. We best get saving then.