Against All Oddities: AE82 Corolla Redux

‘Twas the year 2003. My lowered 1986 Corolla on Minilites doth screeched sideways upon the snowy high school parking at third gear speeds, my visage fixed on impeding curbs, fences, and pine trees.

That is, until Principal Murphy (aka Murph Dog, aka Rick Flair), his dress shoes covered in clay and slush, interrupted my drift with a fiery stare and extended arm. As I both-feet-in’d to a stop, Murph, the lord of South Carolina’s Leesville High School, walked over and snatched my parking pass off the rear view mirror. He wasted no time from there, returning to the principal’s office post-haste to call my parents’ landline.

It was impossible, Mom remarked, that her son could be doing donuts on a snow day. Dearest Matt said he was headed to pick up his friend, Steve, and after that he’d come right home!

Murph Dog assigned me an essay about doing donuts. I had to ask: “Are we talking dangers or techniques?” I took his reddening face and fast-paced breathing to mean it was dealer’s choice. Thus, the Leesville Drift Bible was recorded. More on that later.

At graduation, Murphy allowed me a hearty grin. Over a stiff, ten-second handshake, he gave me two nuggets of wisdom: One, he hated my fender mirrors. Two, I should wear socks for my next graduation.

In the years that followed, stories poured out of that AE82-generation Corolla. (You can read a few of them here.) In college, when I moved to Australia for an extended semester abroad, I left the poor Toyota sitting in a field. It was junk by the time I got back, and the only thing left to do was part it out and scrap it.

To be clear, the car was hardly pristine when I left it. If I recall correctly, the weekend before leaving for Monash University in Melbourne, I had a wild weekend at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington with some friends (the same ones with whom I wrecked E30s). It ended in a broken ringland—which I found out about only later, after selling the motor to a friend (sorry Shaun)—and a battery that cracked following an “airborne incident.” The pressure plate had also seized, and we drove the entire way home from UNC Wilmington rev-matching and watching the traffic lights miles ahead. All this toom place in a car that I’d driven hundreds of laps each around VIR, Carolina Motorsports Park, Rockingham, and Roebling. The poor AE82 was toast.

In later years, I never regretted the events of that weekend at UNCW, but I can’t say the same for my decision to scrap the Corolla upon my return from Oz. Inside me stirred a desire to carry on with—but not recreate—legendary car stories in a hot-rodded Corolla sedan.

The idea has been on my mind a lot lately. I always told myself that when I made adult money, I would build one the right way. I had thought about trying to find one in the same color code, with four doors, in deluxe trim with plaid interior and manual transmission. I’d gone as far as saving those specs into a Facebook Marketplace search.

Lo and behold, in the first week of January, 2025, when I really didn’t need it, I got a notification for a new “1986 Corolla” search result. The body looked arrow-straight, though there appeared to be lots of living matter on top of the paint. The trim I could see told me this was an LE example, which was not ideal. Too refined for my dirtbag taste. But maybe, amid my advanced age and newfound maturity, I could appreciate air conditioning, velour seats, and door pockets. Was it also time to embrace chrome trim on the bumpers and quarter panels? Perhaps. But there was no way I could accept that three-speed automatic, so that would have to go. This was all hypothetical, of course.

The plan started coming together in my head. I mean, I already had the manual transmission I brought in my luggage from Japan. Steps to greatness: 1) Clean up the exterior. 2) Yank out the wheezy, 74-hp 4A-C four-cylinder engine. 3) Strip the auto gearbox stuff. 4) Start piecing together suspension components. For power I’d, logically, go with a twin cam 4A-GE motor, just like old times. I bet there are even spare parts in my parents’ crawlspace…

We all know what happened next. I made plans to buy it. Though the seller asked $800, he ultimately accepted my offer of $500.

With my engineering job’s test and race season starting, not to mention my new baby’s playtime, Thomas and the foundry kids are my hammer for every stupid nail. “Hey Thomas, I did something impulsive again. Would you mind picking this thing up, just east of Atlanta, this weekend?” I asked. “This could be your February rent: I’ll cover the trailer, gas, and road trip snacks.”

Thomas and another shop tenant, Deko, accepted the challenge. They brought the red-clay-caked Corolla home to the foundry after a brief stop at a never-ending Chinese buffet. (My treat.) After baby August was fast asleep, I headed to meet the guys when they rolled in.

The body was perfect. It was unbelievable. Not a speck of rust anywhere. Not a single parking lot ding. How?!

As the pressure washer blasted away the Corolla’s clay and lichen, I discovered that it had been resprayed years ago. On the plus side, the result had a dull luster, sort of like on a C63 AMG or the kind of wrap an influencer would put on a Lamborghini. As Thomas and I finished pressure washing and vacuuming, evidence of its old life started surfacing. The archaeology of such a find is sometimes the most interesting part. The catalogue of items is as follows:

• A Checkers coupon (Expired 2011)
• Gas receipts (several)
• Pennies and nickels dated not later than 2009
• A colony of bleached hornets, dead on the parcel shelf since God only knows when

Everything pointed to a long life in Georgia that had petered out around the dawn of the Lightning cable. 

The following weekend, my wife and I headed down to the foundry with little Gusti man. When I hooked up the electrics, everything worked. A quick spin of the starter made it sound as though the engine had one cylinder with insufficient compression. It was worth a shot anyway. I asked Dana to please scoot the baby as far away as possible, and I armed her with a can of starter fluid. I gave instructions from the driver’s seat (e.g. don’t look where you’re spraying, hold the button down until I say stop, and run away if I start screaming), and before we knew it, the mighty little motor purred to life.

There’s plenty more to come from this story, but for now, I’d like to share that I did all of this while wearing socks. Take that, Murph Dog aka Rick Flair!

Editor’s Note: As usual with Against All Oddities, make sure you 1) are up to date on your tetanus shot and 2) browse the gallery below with its full photos and captions. -EW

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Matthew Anderson is a North Carolina native, professional engineer, car storage landlord, and devoted crapcan connoisseur. He owns a Holden, a Citroën, a Hobby 600 camper, a Moskvich, a Studebaker, an Isuzu, and he thinks that’s it. We don’t ask him too many follow-up questions.