1983 TOYOTA STARLET
CLASSIC APPROACH
There was a time in the not-sodistant past when the likes of the humble Toyota 4K 1300cc with a pair of side-draught carbs, plenty of compression, and a hot cam was a formidable weapon for anyone who put the pedal to the metal and danced on gravel, swapping lock to lock. But, as any motor sport stalwarts, rally folk were not perturbed by advancements in technology, and the quest for victory soon saw such cars superseded by bigger capacity engines and, of course, boost!
Some 30 years later, and here we are, blasting up a wet and winding road as the Lampola five-speed screams away under the floorpan, the Stack tacho licks 9000rpm, and the trees and the Armco are but a blur through the side window. The lack of technology, capacity, and boost, for that matter, simply melts away as the nimble little Starlet dances on its Alcon brakes and proves just how well these little 112kw terrors would have gone in their day.
Hard graft
But this is no 30-year-old survivor that we are riding in. What you see before you is the culmination of 27 months of hard work headed by the team at West Auckland– based F40 Motorsport. That work has seen the transformation of a 1983 Toyota Starlet Sprint into a historic gravel racer, one compliant with the most stringent historic rally regulations set by Motorsport New Zealand (MSNZ) and the FIA.
It’s the machine in which F40’s Steve Cox will make his return to the gravel following a 20-plus-year break from the sport that he got his start in, as he recalls: “I rallied as a young man, from 21 through to my early 30s. I started in a Datsun 120Y, which didn’t last long, and then a MKI Escort that we did two or three seasons with, followed by a Group N Daihatsu Charade, and, finally, an early Ralliart Evo I. We binned the Evo in a pretty big way. We fixed it, but it was never the same — the car was, but I wasn’t — and the general feeling towards rally in the family had cooled, so we took up circuit racing. But I never retired from it; I always intended to go back to rallying. I guess when Hayden Paddon lifted the profile of rallying again, I started watching again, thought a little harder about it, got itchy feet, and decided [that] I would find a car.”
It was decided that historic rally would be his chosen class, and he’d run in the Silver Fern Rally and as many hill climbs and rallies as possible.
When motor sport was dangerous
The exacting regulations of historic rallying are based on upholding the way it was done when sex was safe and motor sport dangerous, with every modification coming under stringent scrutiny to ensure that it is period correct, and just the way it was back in the ’ 70s and ’80s. So, with a little more than just MSNZ Schedule A to worry about, Steve had MSNZ technical advisor Andy Culpin involved from the project’s inception, overseeing each component to ensure that it would be valid under the regulations — everything from the configuration of the rear suspension to the way the engine was pieced together.
However, these limitations on the build did not mean that some modern technology could not be put to use working smarter, rather than harder, before any steel was cut or welded, as Steve explains: “The rear trailingarm suspension was all designed using a
Built to FIA regulations for possible future activities, the fuel cell is an FIA GT tank, which sits in a custom enclosure hidden under the spare wheel
computer suspension-analysis programme, so we know [that] it’s right as long as the points are put in the correct place by the welder, so there was no guesswork.”
The housing itself is a Group 4 Ford Escort item with inboard brakes — a period modification popular to avoid the twiglike axles of a Starlet. The other bonus was opening up the possibility of off-the-shelf components like the Quaife ATB limited-slip differential (LSD) with a 5.1-ratio crown and pinion. It’s one of the benefits with building an ever-popular Escort — as long as the chequebook is fat enough, you can build a complete rally car from the catalogue. This is far cry from the availability of aftermarket parts for Starlets, for which the majority needs to be custom made.
Mind you, when you own a business like F40 Motorsport, which specializes in CNC components, nothing is out of the question. Everything from the strut tops to the brake kit, hubs, and rear arms have been designed and machined in-house, to the way it was done in the ’80s but utilizing modern machining techniques, which, much like anything else found on the Starlet, has produced parts of a quality that is worlds above what would have been achieved in period.
Not that you can see inside, but this is most evident when it comes to extracting the maximum 112kw or so from the 4K 1300cc engine. When you’re dealing with only 1300cc, two valves per cylinder, and no forced induction, squeezing out additional power requires some serious work. Hartley Engines in Feilding tackled the job to 1980 specs with, you guessed it, plenty of compression, much porting, and