OK EVERYBODY, hands-up whose mum or nanna had one of these Toyota Corollas when you were a kid? Betcha it didn’t have a whopping big turbo with 26psi boost, an ANDRA-teched safety cage and the gravy to run 10s over the quarter-mile!

Complete with the patina of four decades on Aussie roads, this little KE55 series Corolla is owned by Brodie Villis. Fans of Japanese performance know that Toyota have some good little big engines in its range but this one is packing a Nissan CA18 under the bonnet. It was already in the car when Brodie bought it from a trailer at a car show. He’s been having a stack of fun with it ever since. He’s also been steadily developing the car towards being the potent, capable and street legal Drag Challenge participant that Brodie reckons it’ll be for this year.

“It’s only run a 14 so far,” he says. “But that was to a 126mph speed,” Brodie says that was with a 3-second 60-foot so it has the mumbo a 10-second car. “With the cage that’s in it, that’s all I’m allowed to run in it.”

The CA18 was built by Tunnel Vision. The short story is that it’s packed full of forged goodies under a 9.5:1 compression ratio and breathes through a Garrett 35/66 turbo and a beautifully-machined CPC (Custom Plenum Creations) intake.

The gearbox is a Paul Rogers Performance modded Powerglide with a 3800rpm convertor and the rear axle is an Aussie Borg Warner located on a set of coil-overs that hang from the reinforced chassis – there’s B-Customs-fab’d shell reinforcing from the front strut towers to the rear of the car. The rear tyres are a fat-for-a-Corolla 255 wide and he’s running in RB – Radial Blown.

Brodie juices it on E85 all the time, which might make the transit stages of Drag Challenge a challenge within a challenge but Brodie reckons the little Corolla doesn’t use too much when it’s cruising.

“I’m just here to have fun and hopefully run consistent 10.1s at each track.”