If you think the compact pickup trucks currently experiencing a resurgence in the U.S. are small, you should see the kind of trucks that exist over in Japan. More precisely, we need to talk about this Toyota AE86 truck that might just trick an untrained eye into believing it’s just a beaten old utility coupe.
Today’s massively popular GR86 may be a heavily revised version of the GT 86 from a decade ago, but both can trace their roots to the AE86 compact RWD family the automaker built between 1983 and 1987. This included the Corolla Levin—the one we have here—as well as the Sprinter Trueno with pop-up headlights.
Both Hachi-Roku (“eight-six” in Japanese) models were offered in coupe and hatchback form, while Toyota also secretly built a convertible version of the Trueno. And while we thought that open-air model was rare when discussing it last month, we could hardly believe our Instagram when coming across this truck version today.
The vehicle, which is dressed in the Panda black and white color scheme made famous by the Initial D manga/anime AE86 tofu delivery racer, was listed by a Japanese vehicle and parts exporter dubbed Stacked Exports six days ago.
In the Insta post showcasing the car, the company mentioned this would go under the hammer on Friday, June 6, 2022, via the country’s USS (Used Car System Solutions) Nagoya auction with a starting bid of 250,000 yen ($1,865 at the current exchange rate).
It was one affordable JDM toy
Now, while the said specialist provides no follow-up info, Australia’s Performance Drive got in touch with another Japanese exporter, Nippon2U, who mentioned that the vehicle eventually found a home for 1,855,000 yen ($13,843 at the current exchange rate). There are no details on its new owner, though.
With the factory models tipping the scales at around 2,200 lbs (1,000 kg), their naturally aspirated 1.6-liter engine that pushed out 118 net hp (120 PS) at best were enough to play the drifting game.
For the record, though, engine swaps for AE86s are popular—the 2000+ 2AZ-FE 2.4L four-cylinder is one of the best ways to do it, since its stock output of 160-177 hp can easily be taken to around 250 hp, which is more than enough to turn the scale-friendly Hachi-Roku into a missile.
The little Toyota’s OEM level of body integration seems to feature the tailgate and possibly the bed of a late ’70s/80s Toyota Publica pick-up. The exporter also mentioned that this is most likely a one-off.
For the record, no other such vehicles seem to show up online. Nevertheless, we did find a photo of a Sprinter Trueno using a somewhat similar conversion (this keeps the factory taillights) that we added to the image gallery. For one, this would be more suitable for the “El Trueno” American coupe utility word play somebody threw in the comments section of the Instagram post below.
