My Toyota Works Drive:
By Richardd Adams : August 2012
She started life on the assembly line of the Toyota Manufacturing Plant in South Africa, but before being saddled with the family oriented engine and luxuries, she was yanked off the line for greater glory.
The bare shell was put under the watchful eye of Ove Anderson of Toyota Team Europe and later of Toyota Formula One fame. Then from the Toyota Motorsport workshops. she emerged a vicious twin cam 4 choke 5 speed limited slip Bilstein equipped athlete, which could run with the best on gravel.
Driven by rally greats Leif Asterhag, Hannu Mikkola and Jan Hettema, amongst others, the little Corolla was at home on the World Rally Championship circuit and it was world class.
Years later, I inherited the still running, but very tired, Toyota rally car when I swopped my Porsche 356 for it (see Porsche Speedster blog).
What was very apparent from my first test drive of this car, was that the law of a carpenter blaming his tools, did apply here. This car would make any driver look good and in my case, look talented. It had the natural ability to maintain a high speed on dirt or tarmac roads and if any driver induced mishap occurred, the car’s recovery was almost instant.
My driving this car, I had then joined the elite in driving a correctly set up (admittedly tired) Works prepared racing car. The performance difference was astounding and I realized that the works drivers were very fortunate and would always have a race advantage.
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This shape was the sportiest of the popular Corolla range. This model is the third
generation, being the TE37 version sold from 1975 to 1979. Rally prepared it had
the 1588cc twin-cam big valve rally engine with a close ratio five speed gearbox
and limited slip differential. It had four wheel disc brakes, safety roll cage,
adjustable pedal box, high ratio steering, Bilstein suspension, alloy wheels,
electric fuel pumps, strut brace, Terratrip Odo etc.
After spending a year trying to restore the car to her former glory, she was sold off when a very lucrative Rally VW Golf GTi offer came along, but that’s another story. . .
See the car in action on the WRC circuit: Watch the video from 2:32 on:
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