From Rust Heap to Concourse Level: Insane ’72 Corolla Restoration project

oh wow what a pile yeah and that's the theater photo and now i can't believe it looks like this [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] just look at this beauty i just can't even right now what's up guys larry chan here welcome to another episode of hoonigan autofocus every single episode i say hey today we have a special car legitimately today we have a really really really special car uh i don't even know where to start this is uh it's just a very beautiful toyota corolla and we have the corolla guy here my buddy mike munez from team wild cards which i'm so lucky that i'm actually a part of as of recently i guess right just not too long ago but you're like one of the original members yeah not as old school as the other guys but yeah i've been with them for a while well thanks for having us at your garage you actually build toyota corollas you're known as the toyota corolla guy and this one is pretty much your prized possession this is the one that you went all out on and this is the best potentially the best and probably the most expensive toyota corolla in the world yeah um yeah that's that's pretty spot on um i've always built a lot of like race cars and uh resto mods and uh i never thought that restoring a car would be that hard and this one was so tough i needed a lot of help i needed a lot of guidance and luckily enough i was able to make friends at the toyota museum in japan and they kind of guided me and helped me including sourcing parts for it okay so you mentioned the toyota museum you're telling me toyota doesn't have a car like this in their possession so this is the early 72 version they have a late 72 version they didn't see the need to make another one because of budget constraints okay so this is right hand drive so this was originally from japan correct this is originally from japan this was in terrible shape there were holes that you can see through the car everything has been grafted and fixed but everything has been done correctly nothing hidden under bondo or any body filler so could you have started with potentially a cleaner car to do this kind of restoration i could have except this trim package that you see here this was very limited toyota only made this trim package this is an early 1972 march 14 1972 to july 31st of 1972 so just less than five months that this trim pack i just made after that um rumors were the higher-ups of toyota did not like the way the front looks because it looks like a catfish uh-huh i like that look yeah so they they changed the whole look so the later 72 models had a more sporty look um so i wanted to make sure that the vin number matches the the trim package and it's even more rare because it was only made for five months so do you know how many of these models were produced that i don't know but i know that there's only five still registered in japan and uh there are none uh exported anywhere else in the world this is a japanese model only so only five are still registered in japan and only three are still being driven okay so we had a little chat before we actually started shooting i've never encountered this this is how crazy this car is so you can't actually even push this car so there are there are very expensive cars and rare cars that i've had a chance to shoot i've shot 5 million 10 million cars but those cars we could still push and i can even help push them this car can't be pushed because of a very special reason and it tells the story right here oh my god so what are we looking at here so the tires that are on this car are from 1972 they're new old stock tires they have only seen the light of day when i first introduced this at toyota fest they were vacuum sealed by someone at the toyota museum in japan for reasons unknown they don't know why it was vacuum sealed but it was protected from the light and was protected from air when i started restoration i wasn't really going to go as far as finding new old stock tires because i i i know that a lot of restored vehicles do not have new old stock tires they tried to get the tires as close as possible to the original but never like the actual tire that came with the car and then somebody reached out to me and says hey we found these tires uh are you willing to purchase it and i said let me see the date code so i looked at the code researched it it was from 1972 and it is the original tires that would have come with this vehicle when it was released in 1972. i mean even to the point where this potentially could not have been on another car you're saying yes it was never installed um i looked at the the bead itself there was no marks that it was never it was it was never installed so these were vacuum sealed by somebody for some odd reason and it was forgotten so there are other parts in the car that's new old stock that people never thought existed and when i started this project and um people that were following me just kind of like said hey i know somebody that has this i know somebody that can get this things just started like coming my way and help me get this project finished in a very short period of time i i just don't even know what to say i've honestly i've been shooting cars for 15 almost 16 years now i've never seen anything like this before like i just can't believe that it's almost a 50 year old brand new tire and the sticker is still on here so is this the tire the only tire that has a sticker on it still yes all the other tires have the blue and yellow stripe but only this one has a sticker on it so this is the one that you kind of proudly display yes and once this thing is stuck in the garage i actually deflate that tire and i put in a vacuum pack and i i hide it from from any light it's it's hidden away until it needs to come out again and just this one tire no all all of them yes because no none of the tires have any cracks they're they're like brand new tires if if you had a time machine and you went back to 1972 it's that kind of quality mike i just don't even know what to say like i just so when you actually brought this out you're telling me you jacked it up and put it on and then dropped it no so i have a set of rs watanabes that i put on as a roller and then i take those off and then i put these on it i just i can't believe it like juan tanabes are like people's dream wheels right yeah like people save up sometimes all their life or years and this is customer just to be able to afford a set up and this was customized by uh watanabe through jdm legends for this car it's actually the the color that was used on it it's the same color as the trueno badge oh okay so do you actually have you actually driven this car since you restarted yes i have driven this car i've put a 150 miles on the engine because i did rebuild this all the seals are new um everything in the engine is pretty much new so it's a zero mile engine how does it feel to drive because it really is a time machine at that point it it feels like a brand new uh old car i guess it really feels good everything's good what a lot of people neglect when they're doing restorations are bushings and things that you can't see uh to me you're only cheating yourself even the bushings the the strat tower uh is very hard to find that strat tower bushing if you look at every te27 they're bubbled up they're domed up because they're they're blown out this one still has a dip to it it's brand new it's a brand new old stock strut tower mount so all that is new so it feels like a brand new car okay so you're not the only one i mean i think this is amazing i think this is very special but you're obviously not the only one that thinks this is so special because it's actually won quite a bit of awards at concourse yes so it has won first place at the concord elegance in palos verdes and also at the la jolla concord elegance it won first place and then at the la auto show just recently it won first in its class also and its debut at uh toyota fest in 2017 it swept the show it won best restored toyota best of show and uh judge's choice so and there's a reason why you didn't take it to jccs yet right after toyota fest uh i had a um a arrangement with the museum in japan that because of them helping me they wanted to play it at the museum so after toyota fest it went to japan for a whole year it was displayed in the museum and while in the museum there was a sheik from dubai a car collector that saw it got my contact information asked if he would be able to purchase it and i said no it's not for sale because my wife and i we have actually willed this car to go to the toyota museum in japan once i'm no longer here once i'm gone so the scenario he gave me was can i lease it so that's what's been happening so he leased this vehicle it went to a private collection in dubai for a year um it came back momentarily for six months and then it went back to dubai again so now it's back again it just came back last week so it's been in dubai several times mike um i actually got chills from you just telling me that like it's it's so crazy to me because one of the reasons why i pushed so hard and one of the reasons why i love this job so much is because when i'm long gone hopefully my pictures can live on you know and i feel like it's the same feeling i guess with this car yes you're you're building something not so much yeah you're enjoying it yeah you're preserving history yeah you're doing all of this stuff but even to the point where you've built it and you want it to last pretty much forever yeah um my wife and i we do not have any kids so this will be our lasting legacy this will be displayed um hopefully forever at the toyota museum in japan and uh hopefully to keep it up the way i keep it up i'm sure they will oh my goodness all right so we haven't even talked about the car yet we're just talking about the story um let's just pop the hood if we can just kind of take a look at the engine i just can't believe that this is the cool this is the kind of crazy thing this is the story that i always love um this wow so clean this was an ordinary pedestrian car it was a throwaway car like back in 1972 if somebody went to the dealership a toyota dealership to buy this car they think okay hey i might drive it for five years ten years you know and then i'll scrap it yep nobody in their right mind would have thought to preserve it like this so one other car that i've had a chance to feature uh was this um 48 kilometer toyota a86 okay yes and that that was that's in belgium yeah and the story with that one is the guy built i think like 11 or 12 rally cars for toyota and then the last one instead of turning it into a rally car he just preserved it for whatever reason yeah and it's the same story it's a pedestrian car yeah it's an ae86 nobody would look at it twice for how many years but now it's become extraordinary yep you know and this i feel like is the same way so like tell us about the quirky things that you had to do to get it to this okay i don't know if you ca you can see it on camera but every nut and bolt is um yellow zinc coated and there are some bolts that are duller in color and like linkages those are cadmium coated i had to do my research to see which bolts were zinced and which bolts were cadmium and the way you do that is actually a really good trick so you if this is already if the zinc is already worn out and it's down to the metal which is like silver you work this out and you look at the threads that are hidden underneath and it still has the old coating so now you're able to know if it's zinc or cadmium so every nut and bolt was zinc and cadmium coated the way it was back in the 70s and the reason for that is when toyota wanted to ship their cars worldwide they needed something to be sacrificed during shipment during shipment the saltwater actually eats up metal and by putting the zinc or the cadmium coating that is the sacrificial piece that the elements eat up so that uh when it arrives to its destination it's not all trashed so a lot of the cars that are here when you when you get it here or when you decide to start restoring cars you don't see that anymore but in reality it should have that coating 1970s and older had that coating that's like the nerd level is just to the max to the extreme like oh okay so and then tell me about the battery all right so the battery these are called pencil tops because they have very tiny posts this was the last thing that i needed for this car but i cannot i could not find any company that would ship it to me because it's hazardous so when the car went to japan at the museum that was a perfect opportunity they just put the correct battery it's made by uwasa and it's actually a new old stock and that's why i keep on plugging it because i'm trying to preserve it this is a 1972 battery as if the tires weren't crazy enough you had to get the original battery yeah so i have to keep on checking the fluids and then you know trickle charging it and actually trying to baby it so that it lasts for a long time so yeah the battery came with the car when it came back so now everything's complete it has everything that it's supposed to have when it was brand new and when this was brand new this was only a there was a 1900 car a thousand nine hundred dollars now it's priceless and now um in japan if you look at the t27s that are coming out of there they're around 30 000 for something you still need to do a lot of work on yeah yeah so okay forgive me i'm kind of a toyota dummy i'm actually now a real toyota dummy standing next to you so tell me about the motor so this is a 1.6 liter 2tg motor back in the day toyota was more into production they really didn't want to have any assets put aside for any racing so yamaha built this head for them this is a yamaha this motorcycle company they built this head for them it came with the twin solex 40 millimeter side draft carburetors um so it's performance it has more performance the way i was told was there were only 50 000 cylinder heads made and this engine was actually in 1971 t27 all the way to a 1983 toyota corolla uh te37 i think so only japanese model that never came out in the us so this original motor original block originally yeah it's all number matching these are all number matching yeah transmission everything matches this is original and that's why i painstakingly um rebuilt this engine i didn't want to put some other engine in it i didn't want to modify it this is exactly to the same tolerances as it was brand new uh the same block in the same head and even the carburetors and if you could see they still have toyota part numbers on them wow yeah that is incredible so okay i just skipped one big thing also the the fact that somebody in dubai a very uh wealthy individual a very big avid car collector leased it not to drive because no one's allowed to drive it including you just to display it yes it's it's really cool i mean i know the guys there are super crazy about cars even to the point where uh i've been to that museum uh in the uae where they have like the shrine to the dodge power wagon the pyramid yeah the pyramid yeah so because uh the power wagon helped the the country so much yeah you know because transportation you know in the desert is key and they loved it so much they decided to build a shrine yeah basically a 10 times scale one which i had a chance to photograph and i had a chance to hang out inside it's actually an apartment but it's just so crazy they take car loving to a different scale that i can only dream of and i love the fact that they appreciate what you've done with this car yeah so the way it was explained to me was a lot of the major car collectors um already owned the significant european cars in american cars and now japanese cars are coming up but they just don't know where the price point is because there's too much of a swing so first of all they did offer to buy this and i said no and so the best the next best thing was for leasing it and i went for it it was extra cash every month and also gives me extra room in my garage so i can work on something else while the car is gone and i was kind of scared because you know i i didn't know how they're gonna treat the car but when i saw that it was inside a container and it was trapped down it was climate controlled and then they they i was able to actually track my vehicle on my app going all the way to the uae and then coming back so um i felt pretty good and so when it came back and it was in good condition uh no additional scratches so the next time the other person wanted it i had no research reservations i told them okay go ahead and lease it again all right now for lease just to look at nothing else amazing okay so let's finish up in the engine bay i know even like this is a delivery what is this like delivery sticker this is something that i found out later on um when i thought i was finished with the car um somebody from toyota that used to work for the toyota factory in japan said you're missing the wax tape so i asked him i said what is the wax tape about he says that's how we were able to feed the wiring harness through the rubber grommet without having the rubber grommet pop out so i asked him what's this wax tape so he researched and then he found a company that still makes his wax tape so i asked him how is it wrapped he goes just wrap a fuse and then let it hang because we didn't care it wasn't supposed to be there for looks it was just there for for us to be able to push the harness in so that's what that is so even even that is the correct way it's supposed to look like when this car came out of the factory the attention to detail so what about like the stickers and stuff so this sticker right here is the dealership sticker where this car came from so i had it uh re-man remade reprinted and that's where they usually put it so it's either there or the rear bumper so this is in the engine bay so what about the rest of the stickers did you these are all these are all so this this is a new old stock radiator so that's why that tested sticker but the emission stickers that one was actually reprinted including that one that was reprinted to the exact same font style even the metallic look to it that way everything's correct and it's in the right position i studied several photographs to see where that emission sticker is on the strut tower so that i can get it in the right spot but reprinted by you represent it in toyota yeah of course of course it was repeated by toyota uh okay and one more thing about the engine bay um we kind of had a chat about this earlier um this is kind of a common potentially a common thing with a lot of cars the fact that the inside of the engine bay is a different color from the outside even though it's technically the same paint correct but what happened here so you even recreated this so i found out by accident i was looking at all the restorations mostly skylines uh the the hakosukas i was trying to see why is it that the fully restored skylines in japan have a different shade of silver in the engine bay than the rest of the vehicle and talking to somebody that talked to someone that also worked at the factory as a painter was saying that they never match what happens is the factory is pretty pretty big so the beginning part of the factory they paint the engine bay and the undercarriage and then they assemble the vehicle as it goes through the chain and then when they get to the very end that's when they hung they hang the fenders the door everything else and then that's painted but because the air pressure and the humidity is different from the first part of the factory to the end part of the factory it creates a different hue of color it's the same color mix same color same paint but it's just those little subtle differences in humidity and temperature and how it was sprayed makes a difference in the color so we wanted to recreate that we wanted to make sure that that's exactly how this car looked like we didn't have the big factory to do this so we just changed the glossiness of the paint so that it would be different on the engine bay compared to the outside to replicate what it's supposed to look like and so you've gone to that level with every part of the car even to the point where i was before we started shooting i was walking around and i was like kind of looking and i was just kind of admiring how perfect it is until i came across here i was like oh i don't i'm not even going to tell mike about these scratches he probably he probably knows about these scratches but he doesn't want he probably wouldn't want to talk about it but this is actually one of those attention to detail things that you actually yeah so in 1972 to early 1973 they had a stamping issue with the left fender and uh when they would stamp the fender it would give it a little wrinkle so obviously when i got this car it didn't have that wrinkle but i wanted to make sure that it looked exactly like most of them the majority of them were so we actually created that in the metal by doing little grind marks uh and look at the picture that we found that had the wrinkles so that it would be the same so we actually created that to make it look exactly the way it would roll out of the factory back in early 1972. this whole time i was thinking like oh man i know this is a crazy car but i shouldn't tell mike about this but it turned out something that you actually did like ah that's what i love about it all right so we haven't even got there's just all right let's let's go around the rest of the car so obviously all of new old stock badges yes and um what makes this also even more special so like i mentioned they made this for five months i don't know how many vehicles they made in those five months with this trim package and and i know that there's only five of this still registered in japan but what makes this probably even more special is that in the five months they made this they made a j model the j model stands for junior a lot of people on the internet have argued about this saying that junior means it had a different engine smaller motor but it actually wasn't correct j means it was a light model that means no radio no air conditioning uh different struts different stance it was actually a lighter model it's almost like kind of like the european alloy cars they made rs yeah very light right yeah so that was the reason why this one has a j badge oh because this is dj model which is very very very very rare this was their sports car model which is super light no radio no antennas no air conditioning no frills and it's also that that way it's smooth you know no no no more holes or no more no radials or anything wow amazing salt is there anything that stands out in the rear of the car that we should know about well these tail lights were so hard to find i i um i ended up owning three sets of these taillights to find one that was uh decent and then out of the blue one of the guys that follow me instagram from the philippines said hey i have this in a box brand new no new old stock no yeah so i ended up getting it from him that's kind of the crazy thing is like who knows could you have done this just a couple couple years before when when social media wasn't such a big thing no i don't think so there's a lot of people that helped me out surprisingly enough i didn't even know that there was such a group i didn't know there were groups of people that don't own cars they just collect parts like they have wheels uh that they'll never put on a car and those are the same people that i reached out to saying i have the car please sell it to me that doesn't make any sense whatsoever to me why would you collect these parts and you don't even have the car um but i guess it's cool that they exist because they're finding all these parts for you yeah like that's kind of half the fun right uh our one of our mutual friends uh jt who we're so lucky we get to feature a lot of his cars for him half the fun is finding these parts and i mean it's so crazy to me that you've created this thing it's it's awesome it's really really really cool so let's check out the interior oh wow all right it smells like it it smells like a brand new car yep it's pretty much a brand new car this is the original seat that that came with the car except for the seat bottom is new old stock i have another set actually that's another one i have uh three pieces of the bottoms and i was fortunate enough that somebody found it in japan again new old stock never been used so i replaced it i know that when you feature a lot of the older corollas the t27s they all have the seat this is the original pattern that the guy from new zealand copied from mine i actually gave him measurements okay i gave him measurements so he made it his name is grant so he made it from my pattern and now jp has it in this car a bunch of people have them in their cars and i have it in my orange corolla also so this is the original pattern measurement wise that i gave to grant this is uh this is interesting because this is not one of those things where you know how us asians man when we get like a new tv the tv remote all looks like this for the life of the tv right but this there's a reason why this is wrapped in plastic you didn't actually do this no so this is new old stock from japan if you look at the chrome it's perfect this is the one one of the first things that happened in older japanese cars the chrome start peeling and they made they're made out of plastic um you know it's hard to find somebody that would actually rechrome plastic especially when it's attached to a fabric so this is new old stock and it even says right there in japanese kanji it says toyota spare so somebody back in the day put this away and um i have it now it's in my car yeah so these are new old stock and then the the panels i had that were decent actually went to a friend of mine in hawaii so now it's in his car so me finding things also help other people out yeah no that's great it's really is such a good community and uh is this the original pressure original brochure if you look inside this is uh the person that had this in japan did not want to let go this brochure but he didn't have the car and again i convinced him since i had the car it's the exact car yeah the exact car it even has exact tires if you look at the tires yeah yeah that's this is the shot that you could basically recreate with this car with the tire turned like that yep incredible no stone unturned with this build really it's really so 115 ps wow what a great looking brochure it is in almost perfect condition too it was displayed in in the museum um cabinet glass cabinet with the washer bottle that's in this car now oh really yeah yeah that's i don't even want to touch it but i i i'm just so curious to see it like if you reached in there in there there's two pictures of what this car looked like when i imported it oh wow what a pile yeah and that's the theater photo and now i can't believe it looks like this yep this truly is incredible and this is why you are the corolla guy i just uh it's just so much to take in you know and this is i'm so appreciative i'm so glad there's car guys like you that preserve this i mean that's kind of what we were talking about earlier this was an everyday every man's car yep you know anyone could go out and buy this if you were just a regular japanese guy yeah you could afford this and drive this in japan but you've you know restored it and made it amazing so like let me just check out the back here yeah the other detail that this car has that a lot of restorers miss is that they install two of these the visors so in early 72 since this this well this is a light car so this is the the j model uh you're only you're supposed to make for racing so they only had one never had one for that side and then the mirror they had two mirrors though yeah they had two fender mirrors wow i love it and does the clock work of course it does yeah amazing yeah the batteries is connected right now yeah wow so like the headliners is new old stock yeah it came in a toyota bag when i got it installed it myself even the cross bracing uh came with the headliner in the bag because they do start sagging wow hey which by the way thank you so much for pulling this out of your garage for me like just being able to see this i wish there was smellovision on youtube already because just to smell what it's like to to be here the smell of a basically brand new 1972 toyota sprinter sprinter toreno ah so cool so i know you mentioned it in one of your posts so the difference between a sprinter trueno and a corolla levin is that you could not take this and have it have maintenance performed on this car where you would take a levine corolla and vice versa there were actually two separate service centers uh the trevena sprinter was considered the upper um version of this chassis t27 and then the uh coral event was the more pedestrian the lower model but i think the difference in price was 400 uh when you bought them brand new right but this was being 1900 yeah and that being 1400 yeah it made a big difference yeah so there were two different service centers that service these vehicles even though they're the same chassis number and everything's everything is shared mike thank you again so much for showing us this really really just such a unique restoration this is just these are the stories that i love telling and here's the crazy thing with this kind of attention to detail it's like you wonder what's the next level you know what could you possibly do next that could top this um but you actually already have a project in the works that potentially we could feature yep in the future so this was tough and and and when i was building this i was thinking never again never again i would do a full restoration uh it just takes too much time and um once you get started it has to be done right um but surprise surprise uh i have a 2000 gt a toyota 2000gt 1967 mf10 that i will be restoring it's actually um going through bodywork right now and um yeah that will be a concours level restoration the same quality as this but in a different level because that has more notoriety more people know about that car yeah so stay tuned okay so that's the crazy thing of course you would restore a 2000 gt but i love that this is pretty much the most ordinary toyota that you could restore yeah 50 years old almost 50 years old and then you go from this to the most expensive japanese car in the world period of course you would yeah it wasn't it wasn't by choice i i was just dreaming about it but um i'm not alone in this venture i have uh two uh gentlemen from dubai that uh pushed me to purchase this vehicle um they didn't they they didn't want to purchase it unless i am okay to restore it so uh we went ahead and purchased this vehicle and uh we're gonna do restoration on it i really can't wait i love that car so much and you know that's kind of the cool thing is you'll do that car justice and once i see it i've seen a couple you know i've seen some at the toyota museum but for me to be able to actually see what it was like brand new in 1968 right 67 67 yeah yeah for me to see what it was like brand new in 1967 yeah and for me to even you know have that smell and just just the look of it i'm not going to touch it i just want to look at it it's it's it's something that i'm really really looking forward to and i just i appreciate it so much thank you again for having us no problem i think that's a wrap we just finished filming uh his uh 1972 sprinter tereno and we're actually going to go out and shoot his levin um out in the canyons but you know after the fact work our guys we keep talking about this thing and i actually had a question for him i was wondering how often he actually runs the engine how often he starts it the thing is he usually leaves it in the garage on jack stands so he will actually start it once a week let it warm up and he'll actually row through the gears all the way i don't know if it's a five speed i think it's a four speed but he rose y'all it's a five speed so he rose through all the gears trying to make sure everything is lubed up and he even runs race gas in this so there's no ethanol content uh just just to preserve it that that's so cool i absolutely love that you know even though it's not being driven really he's still driving it but he actually just told me that he's going to take it to a meet at the peterson museum and he's going to put the wanton eye base on it so he won't drive it with these original tires but he'll drive it with the new wheels and new tires and i'll actually be able to get rolling shots of it driving and maybe maybe can i get a ride in it one day this one right here yeah you get the driver whoa oh my god that just blew my mind okay all right well there you go i think that's a wrap foreign [Music] me [Music] me [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Larry Chen

Views: 321,315

Keywords: Toyota Corolla, TE27 Corolla, Corolla Concours, vintage Toyota, vintage JDM, old school JDM, Toyota Sprinter, Larry Chen, Larry Chen photo, larry chen autofocus, larry chen speedhunters, kyu-sha, kyusha, Team Wildcards, Corolla show car

Id: io8ZjMEzT_E

Length: 39min 51sec (2391 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 16 2020