#STARLET GT MODIFIED UPGRADE#
#STARLET GT MODIFIED TRIAL#

Erwin’s attempts to swap over various parts from the old engine resulted in dead-end after dead-end, at which point he threw his hands in the air and decided to just upgrade everything, which is an approach we very much approve of.

The 1.5-litre block from a Paseo was dropped in to swell the little Starlet’s lungs, having first visited Babo Motoren Revisie in The Hague to be checked over, optimised and bored out to accept 75mm Wossner pistons.

#STARLET GT MODIFIED TRIAL#

Unquestionably the longest and most involved task of Erwin’s project was the engine swap and build-up, which involved a lot of trial and error. And I was busy with modifying it from day one!” They aren’t cheap these days though… but I bought this one four years ago. “It’s just a little Japanese bomb with simple electronics, it’s basically indestructible. So how did this Glanza V enter the picture? “Well, I had to get another one,” he grins. After that came a Glanza V, which taught me a lot about car mechanics, although it ended up going into a wall at over 100mph… I’ve also recently bought a late-1980s EP71 Starlet which is getting a lot of mods.” He’s a dyed-in-the-wool Starlet enthusiast then, that much is clear. “My father has four modded Porsches, which explains a lot, and when I was old enough to get my first car it all started with a Starlet – a 1997 model which immediately received springs and a set of wheels. “I’ve been into modified cars since I was a kid,” he says. Using the larger engine from the Paseo, then throwing a huge turbo into the mix for good measure, Erwin’s spirited something really quite special into being. Crafted by Erwin van der Vijver, resident of Valkenburg in The Netherlands, it pulls together everything that was right about the late-1990s Toyota line-up, amps up the details and transforms the Glanza V from mildly surprising hot hatch to hell-raising road-and-race hyperhatch. Naturally, no matter how promising a base, there’s always room for improvement, and what you’re seeing here is effectively a sort of Glanza V Plus. In a car that weighs about the same as a packet of tabs. The Glanza S is an interesting curio, with its naturally-aspirated 1.3-litre 4E-FE engine producing 84bhp, but the real jewel is the Glanza V – this threw a turbo into the mix, the 4E-FTE creating a robust 138bhp.

The name alone leads to an effort to apply even more lustre to an already sparkling base, and the spec backs this up with a brilliant-cut glimmer. This is a rather appropriate name for the model – Starlet itself, of course, denotes a small star that shines brightly, and Glanza is derived from the German word ‘glanz’ which means ‘brilliance’ or ‘sparkle’. But naturally the special stuff was reserved for the Japanese market: they had the Glanza. In the UK we got a modest spread of spec levels – the base 1.3 Sportif, the slightly more upmarket CD, the sporty-ish SR, and the GLS which had all the option boxes ticked. The 5th-generation (P90) Starlet was a decent enough thing in its own right launched in 1996, it shared its platform with the Paseo coupé, and it was an honest and chuckable little poppet. And we may be biast, but quite obviously Japan always does it best, eh?Īnyway, fast-forwarding to the late-1990s, we find something particularly intriguing straining at the leash at Toyota’s factory gates: the Starlet Glanza V. But what about the Simca 1100TI, the Vauxhall Chevette HS, the Autobianchi A112 Abarth? There are many cars that lay claim to the title, but it doesn’t really matter who did it first – what’s more important is who did it best. There’s been much debate over the years as to what was the first true hot hatch for certain diehard fans, it all began with the VW Golf GTI, or the Peugeot 205 GTI. The cult of the hot hatch is something that’s held performance enthusiasts in its thrall for decades. But this particular Glanza is rather meatier than that. The Starlet Glanza V is a bit of a cult hero, throwing 138bhp of turbo thrills through a perky little chassis.

Starlet gt modified