With the news we shared about the GR Corolla today we thought it only fitting to turn the clocks back twenty years and peek in at what a Japanese performance car looked like in 2002. As it turns out, it looked pretty damned good. In fact, I remember when these cars came out, the Spec V edition, and how quickly we started seeing them at Wednesday and Friday night Test and tune sessions at New England Dragway. They were getting the stuffing beaten out of them and they were taking it.
I’ve actually always found these cars to be kind of neat. When you look at the package of the 180hp engine, a six speed stick, a tough and capable little chassis, and a willing aftermarket back then, the sky was kind of the limit. When we look back and see what the domestic manufacturers were trying to counter punch these things with it is kind of hilarious. None of the stuff that they pulled off, really outside of MAYBE the Neon RT and ACR had the appeal to kids cars like the Sentra did.
We’d even venture to argue that this thing has held up well on the styling front as well. Does it look like a brand new design? Heck no. Does it look good considering it is now 20 years old? Heck yes! There are far more cars from the 2002 model year that are hideous than there are handsome. This one falls in the second bucket.
Anyone out there in readerland ever own one?
I remember these too. It’s been so long now, I don’t recall exactly what the exact issue was, but I do remember the engine would suffer some sort of catastrophic failure. It was a problem on just the spec-v cars. They were very much a time waiting to expde. Very few are still around for this reason.
Never saw that MotorWeek before but some of the little digs made me chuckle. Ordered/purchased one of these new. I needed a decent daily driver since I was commuting 75 miles a day and price point seemed to be the best bang. Handled very well never thought the car to be twitchy or anything close at the limit. The transmission was smooth and easy to shift, nowhere near rubbery and I’ve driven plenty of manual cars over the years. As long as the car was black the red and black interior looked pretty decent. I ran 15.2 multiple times and even a 15.1 on a NHRA prepped national event track (sticky). Car was dead stock except for removing spare tire and drop-in K&N. Threw snow tires on in winter and it was unstoppable. With regular maintenance it never missed a beat up until about 250,000 miles when the computer failed and so did the radio. Fixed it and traded it in on a large SUV to suit my family’s needs. At that time it was still on the original clutch, front paint was starting to chip heavily but the interior was still like new. Fun little car. Haven’t seen one in years.