The most well known “Hachiroku” of them all.
The Toyota Corolla AE86 was never supposed to be a famous or awe inspiring car. It was a simple, cheap, and reliable RWD passenger car. But the pop culture of manga from Japan changed everything.
An old hatchback belongs to a tofu shop owner once the greatest downhill racer becomes an annihilator of anyone that challenges it. In the manga (and anime) it was a perfect example of the “David and Goliath” effect, it took down rivals that were way faster and more powerful with lightness and perfectly tuned suspension. Of course, there was that one time where the competition was just too much for the car to handle and beat it to submission until it returned in the form represented here.
I know this does sound like a cliche since what I’m about to say have been said milllions of times by JDM fanboys worldwide. The “Intial D” manga was my first exposure to the car culture. My dad loves mangas and owns the entire collection of this series. After I was born, which was around the time the manga has been turned into anime. My dad got me to watch it with him, and soon, he started to get me into not just with the series but with cars in general. I’m grateful to my dad and this series that got me to this addiction hobby.
From my little story I just told, it’s no surprise that this Tomica is one of my most desired piece for years. For some reason its the one cast that I always missed on timing. It’s one I’ve been secretly looking for everytime I pay a visit to Taiwan, I did find one on my last year’s trip back but the price it was asking for was astronomical so I had to let it go. This year however, it reappeared at holiday discount price and putting an end to my search. All the feature of the famous tofu delivery vehicle is present from the watanabe style wheels to the advertisement of the tofu shop on the driver side door. Tomica even went as far to mold a bucket seat for the driver while the rest of the seats remained stock just like in the manga/anime after the car was reborn in which the bucket seat was needed for the driver to withstand the new performance upgrades. Another neat touch that Tomica did was leaving the pop-up headlights open.
If any of you out there haven’t read or watched Initial D I would highly recommend it, there’s also a live action movie which is nowhere near as good and suggest to stay away from.
We are pretty much done with my first pile from December, I know this review took awhile and I do apologize for the delay. We’ll get into more TLVs and other brand in the coming weeks. As always, let me know what you want to see a close-up on next.
That’s all for now. Until next time. Cheers.