Who chose your dream car?

Who decided that a 1985 Toyota Corolla is worth $40,000? In spring 2021 an American Corolla GT-S with 112,000 miles, rust and faded paint made that sum on Bring a Trailer. It did not set a new level: most went for around $10,000 then, and in January 2025 a 1985 GT-S with 146,000 miles made $23,000, about £19,300. In October 2023 the same site sold a 1987 Corolla FX16 GT-S for the equivalent of £9,700. That one had 185,000 miles and the same 4A-GE engine, but front-wheel drive.

Part of that gap is engineering. One car drives its rear wheels, which is what drifters wanted. But there is a pair without that excuse. The Corolla Levin and the Sprinter Trueno, the two Japanese versions of the AE86, were mechanically identical. The Levin had fixed headlamps, the Trueno had pop-ups and cost ¥15,000 to ¥32,000 more. The Trueno is the one everybody knows, because it is in a comic.

AE86s at a Japanese meeting: a black Levin with fixed headlamps, and a Trueno to its right. Under the body there is no difference.

The authors

A canon is a list of cars a generation agrees are desirable, without knowing when that was settled. With most canons the authorship is vague. With Japanese cars of the 1980s and 1990s it is specific.

The first author is Shuichi Shigeno. He bought his first car, an AE86, with the royalties from his motorcycle comic and drew on it when he turned to cars. Initial D began in July 1995 in Weekly Young Magazine and ran until July 2013, with more than 55 million volumes in circulation. Its hero delivers tofu in a Trueno. In 1995 that was a Corolla between eight and twelve years old, and the story turns on it beating faster cars anyway.

The second is Kazunori Yamauchi. The first Gran Turismo came out in 1997, sold nearly 11 million copies and had mainly Japanese cars on its list, with a few American and British brands. The series has now passed 100 million. A review tells you which car is good. A list in a game tells you which cars exist, and it is hard to want what is not on it. Someone growing up in Rotterdam or Birmingham had hardly ever seen a Nissan Skyline in the street and could spend an hour tuning one at home.

That list was not pure taste. Around 2000 Electronic Arts took the exclusive rights to Porsche's name and cars, and other developers had to go through EA. Gran Turismo therefore got its first real Porsche only in 2017. Until then players drove Rufs, because Ruf as a marque of its own fell outside the contract. So the 911 was missing from the game because of a licence, as Yamauchi himself said in 2014. So a licensing contract also decided what was on the list.

A Ruf CTR at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show. The marque fell outside the contract between Porsche and EA.

On one point the effect of that choice is easy to see. The first seven Lancer Evolutions were not sold in America. The eighth was, in a decision Mitsubishi said was partly inspired by the popularity of the game. According to a report at the time, players abroad were phoning dealers to ask why the car was not available. An export plan changed because someone in Japan had put a car on a list.

Did they choose, or did they amplify?

The argument has a weak spot. Shigeno did not invent the AE86. Keiichi Tsuchiya won races in one from 1984, became known as a drifter and later advised Initial D. In Japan the car already had a reputation. Nobody has measured how much of the price comes from the comic. We did not find a reliable price series for Trueno against Levin either, and that is the test that would settle it.

Outside Japan the evidence is visible, in the Dutch number plate register as it happens. Toyota sold the car in the Netherlands as the Corolla 1.6i Coupé GT Twin Cam 16 Valves. Under that name and variants of it, 56 are still registered on 3 November 2026, most first registered between 1984 and 1987. Beside them are six cars from 1983 to 1986 that were first registered in the Netherlands only between 2011 and 2018. Their official name in the register is AE86, Corolla AE86 or Sprinter Trueno. When it was sold, the car took its name from its engine. Thirty years later it sits in a government register under the chassis code the fans use.

In England the same happened within one ownership. A woman bought a Corolla GT with fixed headlamps in 1987 and had it serviced every year. In 2006 it was nearly written off after being keyed, because it was worth so little. In July 2021 it made £46,250 at Car & Classic. In those fifteen years little about the car changed.

A Corolla FX16, with the same engine but front-wheel drive. Toyota's list of reissued parts includes the AE86, and not this one.

The choice now also shows in what gets made and what it costs. Toyota makes new parts for the AE86 in its reissue programme, and none for the FX16. In Gran Turismo 7 the Legend Cars have been priced with Hagerty's valuations since 2022, and in an update that May a reported 27 of the 62 went up. The game that helped decide which cars are desirable now takes its prices from the market that came out of that. For a buyer, an AE86 therefore comes in two parts. A specialist can inspect the Corolla. The rest was chosen in 1995 by a comic artist who wanted to write about his first car.

Images: Toyota E-AE86 Sprinter Trueno GT APEX (22010314081) by 先従隗始 (CC0); Toyota E-AE86 Sprinter Trueno 3door GT APEX Sports Package - Toyota E-AE86 Corolla Levin 3door 1600GTV - Toyota E-AE86 Sprinter Trueno 3door GT APEX (23052112271) by 先従隗始 (CC0); Ruf CTR Genf 2019 1Y7A6019 by Alexander Migl (CC BY-SA 4.0); Toyota Corolla FX16 hatch by IFCAR (public domain). Images resized.