ALL WEATHER FIGHTER: Tadashi Yanagawa’s AE86 Levin three-door

April 2, 2009 12:30 am Published by

This car belongs to an unassuming bloke by the name of Tadashi Yanagawa. The interesting thing about him is that he can drift as fast in totally wet conditions as he can in the dry. I saw him at a recent track day at Nikko Circuit and had to have a look at his car. Surprisingly, there’s not much more to it than many other AE86s out there, but it’s still pretty damn cool.

Simple Good Line aero and fender flares are the only exterior mods, but still suit the car perfectly.

That’s a nice lookin’ stack o’wheels ya got there, mister.

Neovas work really well in the wet too, so that may have had something to do with it.

The exhaust manifold is a TRD copy, which Tadashi says was made up by a skilled mate of his, and he reckons it’s just as good, if not better than the real thing.

The engine is made up of a AE101 block and AE92 head with high-compression pistons.

You don’t need much more than this.

The dash is a custom Defi job with centre-mounted tacho, and retains the factory fuel gauge.

Insert Allan Parsons joke here.

According to another driver I talked to on the day, Tadashii is as good as any pro driver (he even managed to pick up the expert-class trophy at this event’s mini competition), but I was also told that he’s one of those guys who just doesn’t really have the head for tandem competition. You could have fooled me though. I was in the same class as him, and he had no problems riding my tail all the way around the first few corners at Nikko Circuit!

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This post was written by Alexi

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