HARRY MAYSON’S

KE70 Wagon

For most, thinking about their first car brings back fond memories of an old shitter that they thought was the greatest in the world and did some silly stuff in. But, for Harry, this now–AE86 4A-GE– hearted KE70 wagon was, er, is, his first car. Purchased when he was the ripe old age of 16, it was a bog-standard example sitting on Enkei J-Speeds, and it would stay that way for a couple of years before the allure of the ‘mighty’ 4K would wear off. “I started considering conversions that had been done before, things like SR or rotary swaps, but decided to keep it within the Toyota family,” he explained. The Hibiscus Coast native made the road trip down to Welly to pick up the 16-valve 4A-GE, which had been removed from a KE70 sedan after being transplanted from an AE86.

The 1600 heart now features Toyota Yaris smart ignition coils, AE101 20v individual throttle bodies (ITBs) with Pipercross Performance filters, Denso 440cc injectors, and a Gilmer pulley kit. To ensure the conversion would be done right, Jon from Strange Workshop took the reins. Strange took care of everything — installing the 20v blacktop ITBs, doing the super-clean wiring work, and commissioning the sexual-looking high-flow four-into-one header, which was fabbed up by Ronnie Lim from RSL Automotive. A pair of Wilwood Superlite four-pot calipers slows things down up front, with factory examples down back, and are covered by 14x7.5-inch Volk Racing Mesh wheels. Suspension is taken care of by a custom set of AE86 BC Gold coilovers at the front and two-inch blocks at the rear, and the Link G4+ Storm has recently been tuned by the guys at GDS Automotive. The complete package is still freshly built and will get a proper shakedown once it has been certified.