Hehe - Car stuff

During our college days, my husband and I owned several Toyota AE86's and used to go to car meets with other AE86 enthusiasts. 

One of the funny things about these meets is that the AE86 does NOT look like a car that anyone would give a crap.  It's one of the Toyota Corollas from the mid 80's.  It comes as a hatch-back or a coupe, and does not look at all impressive or spectacular in any particular way.

So when we'd have our meets - usually at some park near lake Washington and have a bbq with hotdogs and soda - we'd be filling the parking lot with this mid-80s toyota cars and everyone who was just at the park for the sake of being at the park would look at the lot of us like we were crazy.

It was even funnier when, after the bbq portion was done, and we'd all get into our cars speed down the freeway in one big mass.  It had to look hilarious to the other drivers.  This swarm of these little peppy 80's Toyota, flying around them on the interstate.  hehehe...

Here's an example of the car, to give you proper visual -

So, why this car?
Well, there are a few reasons.  One, the thing is perfectly balanced for drifting.  It's rear-wheel drive, has a fantastic limited slip differential, and it was cheap, even when it was new, so it was a great starter car for the hobby drifter.

Second reason for it's popularity is that it was featured in a japanese manga and anime called Initial D.  The car in the image above is made to look exactly like the 86 (hachi roku) from initial d.  The text on the side says "Fujiwara Tofu-den" Which is the name of the business that the main character's dad owns - it's the car that the main character, Takumi, uses to drive Tofu up the mountain each morning to the local resort.  Anyway - off topic.  The point is that it's a black and white "panda" style paint job on the car.

So, where is all of this going?

Well, after more than twenty years, Toyota is bringing back the hachi roku!  They're making a new sporty, rear-wheel drive drifter with the same style balance and handling as the old 80's Corolla.  it's called the FT-86, and is expected to go into production in a couple years.

My husband is absolutely salivating over it.

He was so depressed when he had to sell our last roku shortly after our first child was born.  A 2-door, tiny little hatch is just NOT very convenient when one has to deal with a carseat.

So he's dedicated himself to getting the new FT86 once it's out.  We were talking about what color we'd get it in, today during lunch, and we joked about getting it 'panda' painted (One of our old roku's was silver and black in the same panda-paint pattern).

So apparently he googled it, and we are cearly not the first people to think of this.

Here's someone else's photo edit of the concept car with the 'panda' paint scheme.  :D

hehehe...

The new FT86 Concept