On my way to work, there is a last gen base tercel coupe for sale. 4 speed, driver side mirror, no radio, power nothing.
It has taken a bit of a hit to the back. The trunk is wrinkled and bungeed down and the tail lights didn't look flush.
It seems the mantra of "Add lightness and simplify" is the factory state. Where would I go? Suspension? Power?
I don't know much about the toyota e series engines, but these are light. I would say suspension and sticky.
Last (fifth) generation Tercel means 1995-98, and gets you the later DOHC 5EFE engine as standard, with a blistering 93 hp/100 lb-ft. It looks as though the four-speed's ratios wouldn't be a hindrance for the Challenge (compared to swapping in a 5-speed.) Suspension advice is available on tercelonline dot com, tunemytoyota dot com, tercelreference dot com, and some more of the usual suspects; you supply the grains of salt where necessary. There are a couple of JY mix-and-match big [front] brake kit recipes out there. A quicker Paseo steering rack swaps over. (Heck, virtually all Paseo stuff swaps over if you want it.) At least one good guy on this board ice-races his Tercel, so that's something.
check out my build thread LINK, I got my 95 tercel for 250, the engine burned more oil than gas lol. the car weighed just over 1900lbs stock before all my mods. came in 16th at the 2015 grm challenge on street tires and stock ecu. they are fun little cars with a lot of potential.
I've not been to a challenge, but I've read in teh mag about every one of them and every car at every one of them.
So... Fix the body, paint it, slam it, gut the interior, add boost and NAZZZ, super sticky tires. Watch out for that family with the V8.
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