[uNGu]™ Auto : CAR FEATURE>> VINTAGE RALLY TE72 COROLLA

When I moved back to Vancouver, Canada from London, UK I was a bit saddened I would no longer be able to go to my favourite shop in Covent Garden: Motor Books. It's pure nirvana for any automotive geek, with every surface in the shop stuffed to the brim with all manner of new and vintage car books. It was not easy to leave this behind, let me tell you. However, as chance would have it, I ended up moving very close to an amazing car collectables shop in Vancouver: Wilkinson's Automobilia.

I can spend hours in Wilkinson's looking at all the diecasts, car books and collectables.... I just love the place! Over the past few years I've gotten to know the owner a little bit, Ted Wilkinson. It turns out he owns several interesting vintage cars: a Lotus Elan, Fiat 500 and a very special 1980 TE72 Toyota Corolla GT rally car.

I asked Ted if I could take a few pictures of his rally car for Toyota month and he was all too happy to oblige. So a few days ago, I ducked out of the NFS office and dropped by Wilkinson's to pick up Ted. We then drove a few blocks to his house to have a look at the TE72. This small garage it where the Corolla spends most of its days.

We pulled the car out of the garage into the adjoining alleyway to have a look. Ted started to tell me about the history of this rally machine. It was a factory Toyota Canada car in the early 80s and won both the overall Canadian and the North American Rally Championships.

The car was built and campaigned for Toyota Canada by Finnish transplant Taisto Heinonen. He is the winningest driver in Canadian Rally history BTW, with five championships to his name, all with Toyota.

The Corolla maintains the same overall specs as it did during its championship winning days. It has all TTE (Toyota Team Europe) Celica running gear and suspension.... Such things as w55 close ratio 5 speed trans, twin plate racing clutch, 4 wheel disc brakes and 5.9 rear axle ratio with floating axles all came from TTE.

When Ted bought the car it had been rebuilt as a street machine.... the owner had previously detonated the motor at Westwood raceway so a new, period correct powerplant had to be sourced.

This scan from an early 1980s TRD catalogue shows the engine. It's a 152e 16v two liter race spec engine.

The 152e was Toyota's race engine that was based on the 18r. It has a 16 valve Yamaha designed head, mechanical fuel injection by Nippondenso and a dry sump system. Check out the individual throttle bodies.

Its rated at 250 - 280 Hp at 9000 RPM. Interestingly Ted found the engine in an old, beat up AE86 rally car.

The wheels are special rally spec Panasports. They are extra tough to withstand the stresses of rallying.

This TE72 had a pretty strong results record back in its prime: of its 27 rally entries, Heinonen took the car to14 outright victories.....  Interesting rear exhaust set up no?

If you owned this car would you fill up those fender flares with some wide offset wheels? Go for more of a works look? Or would you keep every thing period correct as Ted has?

Here is a look into the cockpit.

Does any one know the make of the wheel?

You can see by looking under the dash that this car is pretty spartan....

I like the detail of the co-driver's reading light.

A look at the fuel system.

I find it a bit funny that this piece of Toyota racing history lives in a garage, a 5 minute drive from where I live.... It just goes to show that the grass is not always greener is it? There are interesting pockets of car culture all over the world if you know where to look.

 Thanks to Ted Wilkinson for taking the time to show me his car!