One of the best things about attending the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is the interesting machinery brought from continents away and entered by passionate amateur racers. This year’s race saw a veteran racer from Tokyo, Satoshi Yagi, climb the mountain in a tiny econobox that was never sold new in the United States, and he beat the time of a 775-horsepower Shelby F-150 Super Snake.
We did get new Toyota Starlets in the United States, in fact, but just the second-generation version and only for the 1981-1984 model years. Those cramped but efficient little cars had rear-wheel drive, which makes them popular recipients for engine swaps today.
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Yagi’s Starlet isn’t one of those. He races a fourth-generation Starlet, which was related to the US-market Toyota Tercel and was pitched in its homeland via some of the most tachycardic television commercials ever created. It was available with front- and four-wheel drive. When I first saw this car at a distance on the mountain, I thought it was an FX16 Corolla.
Yagi has been racing rally and hillclimb events in Japan for more than 20 years, and he decided that he had to compete in what he describes as “the most famous and majestic” hillclimb race in the world. He shipped his Starlet across the Pacific and hired a Colorado shop to help him get it PPIHC-legal. His partner, Atsuko, joined him in the United States for his biggest race yet.
I had a 1930s French camera with me, to document the Alpine A110 entry properly, and so I was able to shoot Yagi and his car with my favored type of photographic hardware.
The engine is a Toyota 4E 1.3-liter DOHC straight-four, related to the 5Es we got in some US-market Tercels and Paseos of the middle 1990s, with an aftermarket turbocharging rig and some internal modifications. Yagi built it himself and says it makes about 200 horsepower. The power goes to the front wheels only.
This car was classed in the Pikes Peak Open division, which is for vehicles with stock bodies and major mechanical modifications. That means that Yagi’s front-drive commuter with its not-so-major mechanical modifications would be competing in the same class as the likes of Romain Dumas and his quadruple-digit-horsepower SuperVan and Raphaël Astier’s factory-backed Alpine A110.
Yagi qualified to start 60th out of 66th entries, and he piloted his Starlet up the mountain with a respectable 12:33.959 time. He beat two Pikes Peak Open division rivals (both DNFs) in the process.
And, yes, a 200-horsepower FWD Starlet beat a 2023 Shelby F-150 Super Snake and its 775 horses up the hill. The Shelby-ized pickup had a 13:03.579 time. Never seen a man beat the snake before!
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All in all, an ambitious overseas racing adventure that earned Yagi lifetime bragging rights.
JDM Toyota Starlet Races Pikes Peak Hill Climb
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