The Toyota AE100 Corolla is no stranger to us, this is a car that wears many masks and disguises as we've discovered. Starting from the beater that carries a pair of double decker pipes at the front and rear of the car as bumper protectors to immaculately restored examples wearing a selection of the best exterior bits ever produced for this particular generation, the range of the Corolla 100 is pretty wide. Trust me, there are too many of them around.
Today's feature car is one that has worn quite a few of the aforementioned guises. Quazi Raheeb Hossain's AE100 has gone from experimenting with hacked stock front bumpers to the BZ Touring Wagon facelift people love and hate, to its current form - the Yakuza VIP style front fascia boasting quad fog lights. The exterior of the car gets a full makeover and restoration from the harsh life it once used to live. The headlights have been swapped in the favor of the rare dual housing units from the upmarket variants and finishing off the front-end is a hood-scoop seamlessly integrated into the stock bonnet, giving the car a unique JDM aura.
The car was bought back from an Army auction in 1997 and was his father's prized gem. Raheeb wasn't even allowed to touch the car before 2006, when his father gifted it to him. At that point the car was stock. Raheeb did not know much about customising cars back then and hence the abuse began - he went through six 5AFE engines until he decided to rebuild the last one. That was the turning point - he installed oversized pistons, bigger injectors, unrestricted exhaust and many __more little tweaks were done back in 2011. In 2012 he realized he needed more, and he converted the car to manual transmission, installed four wheel disk brakes, lowered the ride height and put in anti-roll bars. By the end of 2012, he realised he wanted even __more out of the car and decided to do a 4A-GE swap. At that point the engine was burning oil and again the car went under surgery. He drove the rebuilt 4A-GE until 2015, when he was bit by the turbo bug. Since the only transverse mounted turbo-charged engine making decent power was the 3S-GTE, the choice was obvious. Luck didn't favor him this time either, his first 3S-GTE had a faulty ECU which led to disaster in just over a month.
After a month of frustration, he finally decided to fix his prized AE100. He got another 4th gen 260 BHP 3S-GTE from a Caldina and put in AFR, oil temp and oil pressure gauges to monitor his engine's health and all was smooth sailing from there on. He installed coilovers and AE111 twin pot brakes to match the drivetrain and for over a year the car has been running great. In current form the car is running a FWD gearbox since an AWD conversion is complicated, but it sure is fun! It will spin up its wheels till 2nd gear unless you're gentle with it, it may not be as forgiving as it used to be, but it's a lot more fun because of that. In the near future Raheeb wants to install a S54 gearbox and a clutch kit to further fine tune the car.
Photos: Farhan Ahmed