Hello guys! Small updates about the car, large block of information incoming....
I went to the local registration and inspection office to ask what the next steps would be for such a car and they gave me some useful hints on what info I should collect. Seems like they will be generally helpful with guiding me through the Swiss legislation of the 1980s.
What they could not say anything about ("car is entirely unknown without reference values") is three main points: 1) emissions, 2) power and 3) noise. All other points should be pretty straight forward (the TRD suspension and so on), it seemed. They told me to get in touch with Toyota Switzerland and the local measurement and homologation companies, so I did.
First I called up Toyota and asked for some help with importing a classic car. The woman at the knew exactly who would be my man at Toyota and referred me directly to him - turns out, he's a real guru regarding old Toyotas and was much more helpful than I could have ever hoped. My relatively short question was answered with a full history lesson about legislation in Switzerland and local AE86 peculiarities. For completeness and information sharing, here comes a translation and summary of his input (I removed some parts for privacy):
Toyota Switzerland Wrote:Dear Mr decryphe
Thank you very much for your E-Mail. Personally I can understand you, back in the day I registered the first Corolla Twin-Cam16 (AE86) in Switzerland, after having driven the emissions test car for a week-end and being really excited with the car.
I also privately own a Sports 800 from 1966 from the Japanese market, which I imported about 30 years ago. [...]
Your project has my sympathies, which unfortunately doesn't make registering the car in Switzerland any easier.
Maybe you have already read the model history of the Corolla on my homepage (CH-models) and can already anticipate that your Trueno will be a special and difficult case that will need some extra work and will lead to some further expenses. In practice it is unfortunately the case that if you want to drive something exotic, you have to invest more. It's the price of the unique, which is - especially at meetups - certainly worth it.
But first, some history. The Japanese had a real problem in the cities with air pollution in the 1960s and 1970s. At vending machines it was possible to buy a breath of fresh air for a couple yen, the police officers used breathing masks at the junctions.
That way, the Japanese had to establish strict emissions rules much earlier than we did. Those were focused on the main pollution factor, which was slow driving in the city and emissions at idle during traffic jams. High speeds like 80 km/h were of no importance in the cities and the highest allowed speed on highways was 100 km/h anyways.
In Europe this was entirely different, here the cars had to fulfill different rules that could apply to the German Autobahn as well, with their unlimited speeds. The legislative focus was thus on an entirely different use case. Additionally, the Japanese had switched to unleaded fuel already in the early 1970s and could thus already use catalysts.
The European standardized legislation according to ECE 14.03 (since 1.10.1982) was not strict enough for the Swiss government at the time. Only Switzerland and Sweden established more strict rules (Switzerland: AGV82, Sweden: A10). These stricter rules had to be fulfilled using leaded fuel at the time, so usage of catalysts was impossible.
For Toyota this meant that for the Swiss and Swedish markets a special model had to be developed and the engines adapted. In Switzerland the Corolla SR was offered for a year using the standard front wheel drive Corolla engine with 78 HP. Only a year later the Twin-Cam16 models with a 4A-GEC engine were released (the "C" stands for the special emissions standards). Unlike the European models, these cars got an L-Jetronic injection system instead of a D-Jetronic. The power was slightly lower at 120 HP instead of 123 HP. The noise level limits were also slightly stricter, which meant that some changes had to be made to the exhaust system. Additionally, the coupé version of the car was not deemed sellable in Switzerland and thus only the hatchback was offered.
So do you see the problem? The Japanese version of the car was never built for fulfilling the European emissions rules and especially not for the even stricter Swiss rules. That also goes for other things like seat belt mounting according to ECE standards, headlights for left hand drive, etc.
In all of Europe, there is no official documentation about the Japanese version of the AE86. For the regulatory body this means that the car is a unique car ("Einzelstück"), for which there is no official importer and for which there is no equivalent model in the local market. Thus the legal importer is you personally and thus you have to bring all the necessary documentation to verify that the car adheres all applicable Swiss regulations that were valid at the time of its first registration (1984) in Switzerland.
But, before you exasperatedly ditch the car, I want to give you a couple of supporting hints!
The regulations for cars were pretty rudimentary in Switzerland in 1984. Only the emissions and noise limits were strict, all other rules are simple and oversee-able.
The verification that the car fulfills the emissions and noise limits will have to be made at a proper testing facility. I would suggest going to the FAKT AG in eastern Switzerland. The contact at this company, Mr [redacted], is an expert for emissions regulations and can help you a lot with your inquiries.
The AGV82 regulation had to be fulfilled with leaded fuel as written before, but retroactively it is allowed to fulfill the regulation using unleaded fuel. If no catalyst is installed, the installation of a standard unregulated 3-way cat would be an option. In my experience this does not have an influence on performance, but can reduce emissions by an enormous amount and the exhaust noise is reduced slightly as well. Mr redacted has told me once that Japanese versions of cars have a very good chance of fulfilling our strict rules if they are technically sound.
The car has to be presented as a unique car ("Einzelstück") at the local inspections office, an individual inspection and homologation ("Einzelabnahme"). The TRD suspension setup could be considered a factory option in Japan and should not be a problem (from the TRD catalog). The expert thus has no grounds to ask for special documentation.
It could be that the Japanese documents have some odd weight numbers for the car, as they calculate very differently from us. If this is the case, please send me a copy of the documentation and I can help with a confirmation on how these numbers work. The Japanese fortunately use the same numbers and units as we do.
There are a couple imported cars in Switzerland from Japan. These are primarily Twin-Turbo Supras and even a couple entirely unknown models from Lexus and Toyota. This shows that it is entirely possible to go through the hoops to get an import registered in Switzerland. If the expert at the local inspections office has a heart for such cars, it's already much easier.
Even though I can't help directly, I can provide some hints and information to support your project of getting this car on Swiss roads.
I'm looking forward to meeting you and your car at a Toyota meetup some time in the future.
Best Regards from Toyota
That took longer to translate and type than I'd thought... but that's not all, here's the second email in the next post! Hope you can find some info in this to help you with an import as well.
And here's the second part which is no less interesting!
Toyota Switzerland Wrote:Dear Mr decryphe
[...]Personal info about Sports800, redacted[...]
Mr redacted from FAKT AG can estimate quite well if a Japanese version of a car will be able to pass AGV82. They have tested a couple cars according to this rule already. In the meantime, it is even the case that some Japanese emissions rules are considered equivalent to the Swiss rules. I do not have the necessary legal info to back this up though.
Noise emissions is actually not easy to pass. The limit was at 77 dB(A). The measurement method was that one would drive at 50 km/h into a 20 meter long measurement area in second gear. Upon entering the 20 meter area, one had to floor the gas and release it when the car has left the area again. In the middle of the area on each side of the car, the measurement equipment would be placed (at 7.5m distance from the car). This test would be repeated in 3rd gear and the average of these two measurements would count towards the 77 dB(A) limit with a 1 dB tolerance.
With this method, the noise of the engine and exhaust isn't even that important, but engine characteristic, gearing, final drive, weight of the car, wheels and so on. Also if the car has a higher power it will reach higher speeds within these 20 meters and thus be measured louder.
Best Regards from Toyota
With information I got from contacting the FAKT AG, I was able to piece together some additional information: The AGV82 test is only to be performed in 3rd gear for vehicles with more than four gears. Idle noise is only a reference value and does not count for regulations. For automatic gearboxes, kickdown function has to be disabled.
With these infos and some technical specs of the car I will go to the local inspections office on Thursday or so to discuss the next steps.
Hope you enjoyed the read!
