An Ls1-powered 1994 Toyota Corolla

This little LS1-powered 1994 Toyota Corolla’s chest thumps with a 346ci bowtie transplant, but even that doesn’t compare to the amount of heart that went into its build.

THE #lstheworld phenomenon has seen LS engines slammed into the front of just about everything imaginable, and its latest victim is an innocent little AE94 Corolla that has been transformed into a track-hungry monster. And yep, its rear-drive!

This article was first published in Street Machine’s LSX Tuner magazine #09, 2019

The car was originally dug out of a paddock by Josh Shelley, whose idea of building a rear-drive V8 Corolla was hatched around the Bumpstop mentoring program, which he founded in 2016. Run by Fusion Australia, Bumpstop is a non-profit organisation that specialises in mentoring programs for disadvantaged young people.

Josh has been with Fusion Australia for over 15 years and he started Bumpstop as a means of teaching valuable life skills to teenagers (and to build some mean cars in the process). Their first project car was a Honda CR-V, but the humble Corolla quickly snowballed from a similarly simple build into the mad machine on these pages.

The Corolla was donated to us as a paddock basher with what we were told was a bad misfire, hence the number plates, says Josh.

The original plan involved a Commodore V6 and dirt motorkhana events but that all changed.

A crashed VY Commodore SS donor car was sourced, which is where the first hurdle presented itself.

The Corolla front strut towers were 20mm further apart than the ones on the Commodore!, Josh laughs.

The program sees the teenagers coming in one or two days a week, while Josh works most afternoons on the various projects to keep them truckin along.Also, weve probably got over 800 hours of work in this thing, Josh estimates.

To say it has been a big job would be an understatement.

The surgery is as extensive as you can imagine. Furthermore, the front end has the front rails from a VX Berlina grafted onto the existing Corolla rails, which means an entire Commodore sub-frame can be bolted into place. While it wasnt difficult to align the factory struts into the front Corolla towers, the firewall did require substantial re-engineering to the tune of a 200mm recess to make the LS1 and 4L65E box fit.

Interestingly, Josh discovered that the rear floorpan only needed to be massaged slightly for the Commodore independent rear end and custom suspension set-up to fit.

Once we removed the factory fuel tank, we found the Commodore rear sub-frame and suspension fitted in almost perfectly, he says.

All this over-engineering means the serviceability of the little Rolla is super-simple, with factory Commodore parts an easy bolt-in affair for the driveline, suspension and brakes. Also, the stoppers are VX Commodore items with upgraded DBA T2 pads and discs front and rear, while the suspension comprises upgraded coil-overs from Maxpeedingrods in the front and American Hot Rod coil-overs out back.

You stand underneath the thing and it just looks like a short-wheelbase Commodore, Josh says.

The driveline remains largely untouched and is based around a standard LS1 and shift-kitted 4L65E gearbox. The LSD was swapped for one with a more aggressive 4.10:1 ratio, and a Haltech 950 ECU was donated by the company.

While it may seem pointless to put in all this work just to fit a standard 235kW LS, you need to remember a factory AE94 Corolla weighs just 1086kg, or 500kg less than the VY SS donor car. That weight saving is the equivalent of having a 461hp (343kW) LS in a VY Commodore!

Its a car thatll kill you on any given day, Josh laughs. Its a wild little thing.

But the most unique part of this car isnt the incredible engineering or the bonkers power-to-weight ratio; its the purpose of the build and the people behind it. The Bumpstop program pulls in kids from all walks of life. Furthermore, the goal isnt to create a new generation of mechanics. Its to give the kids hope for the future.

We often ask the kids what one of their highlights was for the week, and sometimes its as simple as being able to start the car or change a tyre, says Josh. It sounds simple to us, but these kids often dont have parents or anyone to teach them stuff like this, and thats what were trying to do here.

They often get told theyre no good and theyll never be anything. So, we try to change that. Its about teaching life skills and giving them ambitions for the future.

A good example of this philosophy is Daniel, one of the three main workers involved in the project. While school wasnt his forte, Daniel is a gun with his hands and can make just about anything. If people tell him hell never be able to do anything, he simply says: They said we couldnt put a V8 in a Corolla, and look what I did.

The car took around 12 months to build and was completed late last year. So far it has done a dirt motorkhana and has had a shakedown at the Marulan Driver Training Centre tar circuit. The six-point cage has been IHRA-approved to run as deep as 10.50sec and with some R&D a time like that isnt out of the question.

Its a car with a big heart thats been built with a lot of heart, Josh says.

CARNAGE!

JOSH had a number of motivators to keep himself and the boys fighting through the long hours during the build process, and one of those was the potential of racing one of our very own project cars.

Our FG Falcon, aka Turbo Taxi, is a 500hp sleeper built for our Carnage YouTube show. Josh contacted us early on in the build process to see if wed be interested in racing the little Corolla when it was finished.

Now, at the time of writing, the Corolla is yet to go drag racing, while the Turbo Taxi has a broken gearbox. While theres no official timeline set for the race, theres a chance you may see this little monster go head-to-head with one of our own. So, be sure to keep an eye on our website, socials and YouTube channel!

FUSION AUSTRALIA1994 TOYOTA COROLLA

Paint

Wattyl Sea Blue Hammertone

ENGINE

Brand: GM LS1Induction: StandardECU: Haltech Elite 950Heads: StandardCamshaft: StandardConrods: StandardPistons: StandardCrank: StandardOil pump: StandardFuel system: Bosch 044 pumpCooling: VS Commodore V8 radiator w/ thermosExhaust: Pacemaker Headers, 3in side exitIgnition: StandardPower: 213rwkW

TRANSMISSION

Gearbox: 4L65EConverter: 2200rpm stallDiff: VY SS, 4.10 LSD

SUSPENSION & BRAKES

Front: Maxpeedingrods coil-oversRear: American Hot Rod coil-oversBrakes: CommodoreMaster cylinder: VX Commodore

WHEELS & TYRES

Rims: Dynamic 18x8in D-Hole 5×120 +40 offset (f & r)Rubber: Accelera 651 Sport 235/40 R18 (f & r)

THANKS

Fusion Building & Maintenance; Penrith Auto Electrical; Primp My Ride; Jax Tyres St Marys; Pedal2 Metal Fabrications; Shelleys Prestige Cleaning; Europlaster Linings; Canterbury Concepts Grabrails; Sinclair Ford; Bond Roll Bars; Peach Tree Car Detailing; Hickeys Metal Fabrications; Christian Auto Sports Club of Australia; Custom Bugs & Busses; Signature Window Tinting & Signs; Haltech for donating the ECU and loom; and the boys, Daniel, Zac and Zeke