165hp / 6400 RPM, 1070kg, FF
¥1,710,000


Alright a AE92 Trueno! ... Woah, calm down there biosterous....

When you hear ‘Trueno’ I expect you're thinking of… this…





Close - but that is the AE86 Trueno - If you're not familiar with this car, it became famous in Japan car circles for its excellent weight distribution and drifting characteristics, and then became world famous because it features in Initial D - a Japanese anime about mountain racing.

I have a fun story about the time I rented one of these and drove it around Japan. Maybe I'll share it one day.

The AE92 Trueno featured here is… not that car. It's the next generation of it. A great car, that never did quite live up to its predecessor. I suspect this is mainly because it lost the rear wheel drive power train that made them so driftable, in favour of a more conventional / safe / boring front wheel drive.







It does however have a supercharged variant of the infamous 4-AGE engine that was in the 86 - which ups the power considerably over the previous model.

Also like the AE86 before it, it had this variant with the pop up lights (Trueno) and version with regular headlights (Levin)





But you know what else had popup lights and this amazing engine? The first generation MR2. Though sadly, there isn't any here for sale… Sorry, I got sidetracked talking MR2s again.

This Trueno is a nimble little car with pokey amount of power. It's probably the lowest performer here, but makes up for it in weight. It's a tidy looker.

We've clearly gotten to the next stage in the car classes though, because the television commercials feel decidedly more… up market, targeting young, working professionals, like Hiro and ourselves.





The Tagline for this car was ‘Elegance’. A much more cultured tagline than the previous AE86 model - ‘Sexy’