AE86 and Friends Northwest Meet

Bremerton Raceway-Bremerton, WA-January 20, 2001

The Northwest AE86 and Friends Meet was a success! We had a good variety of people there, American and Canadian, different ages, Oregon, Washington, B.C., and Alberta. The meet was organized through Dori Kaze, Club 4AG, Toy-Mods, and Old Celica Club. It was good to meet some people who love this silly old sports version of some Toyota econo-car as much as I do. We weren't about heavy mods and monster tuning, sheer driving brilliance, or a do-or-die competitive spirit, but we did have fun meet up to talk and autocross our cars. By my count we had nine AE86s, two or three AW11s, an older twincam Corolla, and one RA40 Celica...a new record for Northwest meets? We also had several others riding along who had left their cars at home. Some WWSCC regulars had Toyotas too, several SW20 and AW11 MR-2's, a couple of Lexus IS300's, and I saw a green AE102 sedan...not sure who it belonged to. The rest of the field was pretty much the usual suspects: Rustangs, Corvettes, Porker 911s, Miatas, Honder Civics and Integra Type-Rs, Beemers and Imprezas, Nissan 240s, etc...plus a Datto 510, late-70's Civic, tuned Mitsubishi 3000GT that did some impressive drifts/spins/wheelspinning, a Chevelle or Malibu or something like that, and a few other less-common auto-x cars.

Bremerton Raceway is a converted section of the airport, so there was lots of room for a fast autocross course. The weather was....hmmm...uh, what you would expect for winter, cold, windy, some sun, and off-and-on rain, but we had fun anyway. It only got really bad when we had to go out and work the course setting cones and the like. I think my feet and fingers finally thawed out for the first time all day on the way home...by the time the car heater had been blowing on them all the way to the ferry! My apologies to those who had problems with the ferry schedule...I didn't know that they would be down to one boat for the weekend due to mechanical problems...I ended up driving all the way around in the morning, and took the ferry back at the end of the day.

Each car had some interesting personal touches...Rick's liscense plate frame reflects his philosophy:




Hard to see from this angle, but note the Supra wing on the top of the hatch.


Don't laugh!
Hehehe...I like it! :) None of this, "Waaah! Mommy and Daddy bought me an S2000, but I still don't know how to drive!" coming from the AE86 camp. :-) Rick gets my vote for Most Utilitarian. Most of us were more towards the...uh...the cheap and functional end of the scale, but I love the look of AJ's clean blue coupe:


Lookin' good! The MR2 belongs to Aaron's cousin.


Nice rims...Buddy Club, right?
AJ gets my vote for best rims. And Rick (originally from Hawaii Rick, not the other Rick) had a SR5->GT-S hatchback that was getting attention from both Toyota fans and other people alike. This car came from Hawaii, where Rick had a 2T-C installed, now it is in Washington with a 4A-GE. Damn, his car was clean...LOW, and featured some nice subtle bodywork mods.


Smooth shaved sides!


Glassed-in TRD spoiler.


This car is low...


Note that the groove down the side of the body is gone, too.


No front corner marker/turn signal, and smooth headlight cover! Nice work!
I nominate Rick for most attention grabbing/visually spectacular. Marco gets the underdog award; without an easy means to tow his GT-S, he was there with his automatic SR5, but he drove it hard! Marco's gold coupe was the only one representing for the SR5's, but in the future this car will get a GT-S conversion from Marco's recently purchased GT-S racecar.



Mattia drove well in the auto-x and gets my vote for best rally lights!


The twin of my car, save rims and the fact that we didn't install my lights!


Jason and Menace take cover from the camera on the far side of Mattia's car, while Mattia himself chats with fellow Toyota owners on the right.
I think Jason had the best-looking Supra rims (I love the black paint!)


Purposeful.


Mattia and Rick stroll past the front of Jason's car.
Marco's friend with the other other red coupe gets the award for original AE86, and I nominate myself for best AE86 on stock springs!


The red car of Marco's friend...sorry I can't remember your name!


My coupe in front of Rick's hatch.
The guys from Alberta won the distance award hands down, and seemed to be excited to see so many sporty cars in one place, instead of trucks and farm equipment! :)


Candid of Mattia with the colorful hat, and RallyrRacer88, AJ, and friends.


The Canadian contingent, surrounded by mystery MR2's.
With several cars over 200,000 miles, I was wondering what sort of combined mileage we had as a total group! :) We were checking out each other's mods too, from Rick's bodywork to Mattia's intake to Marco's Addco swaybar to my short shifter. We were all telling stories of our other cars, bargain-basement buys, and the one that got away, and then a guy named Brian stopped by to show off a recently-purchased-for-next-to-nothing silver GT-S hatch. Brian wins the bargain purchase award for his good rescue work with this hatch.





For the non-AE86/AW11 crowd, we did have an RA40Celica and another Corolla, I think TE31.


2T-G...a living Toyota twincam legend.


Alberta plates?


Supra OEM alloys were everywhere.


MR2, Celica, Corolla, and more Corollas not far behind that.
On To The Next Page For Autocross Action!