Wish We’d Seen This at SEMA: Classic Toyota Pickup with 1JZ Swap
This 1987 Toyota Pickup is packing a 1JZ, which makes it way more potent than it was when it left the factory!
Last week was the 53rd running of the annual SEMA show. And like basically everything else scheduled to happen during the pandemic, it was a little different than most years, in that it was completely virtual. Wisely, the organizers didn’t decide to just forge ahead, so we were speared a Sturgis situation. But while there was some interesting stuff revealed during the online event, like this supercharged Tacoma Overlanding rig, as someone who have covered SEMA for 15 years, I think it’s safe to say this year’s big show was kind of a bust for news.
So I went looking for something that I would have liked to see on the floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center, and stumbled across this older clip of a 1987 Toyota Pickup with a 1JZ motor. As for things I like to see at SEMA goes, this checks a lot of boxes for me. First, it’s a restomod, which I totally dig. Second, it’s an engine swap that’s kept things in the family. And third, it’s a slightly off-the-beaten-path choice. Because as great as it might be? The 1JZ just doesn’t have the street cred of a 2JZ — because that mill was never mentioned in Fast and the Furious flick.
In talking about the build, owner Juan said the initial inspiration came from not wanting to deal with the stock engines finicky carburetors anymore. So fittingly, he ditched the ECU the motor came with, and swapped on a JZX100 throttle body. That means no electronics to mess around with, and he only had to deal with about five wires to get the inline-six running like a sewing machine. Overall, the 1JZ sits nice and pretty in the engine bay, and it looks like it could almost be factory.
While the dudes from Hoonigan repeatedly tell Juan that he won’t be bale to pull off any donuts thanks to his truck’s open differential, he still manages to put on one heck of a smoke show. Personally, watching him whip the truck around in that small space was making me nervous, but he handled the confined parking lot no problem — even if he missed nailing his tail pipe on the fence by a couple of millimeters at one point.
Unfortunately, toward the beginning of the clip, Juan recounts how he was stopped by the cops for having a modified vehicle not long before this was shot. And since California is unreasonably strict with engine swaps, or really mods of any kind, whether this hot truck still exists is anyone’s guess…
Photos: YouTube
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