Old school legend... Toyota Corolla RSi

The Toyota Corolla RSi was a family car that had a lot of Go. It came with a 1.6 litre 20 valve 4A-GE engine pushing out 118kW. At the time, it took only 7.7sec to get to 100km/h, topped out at 207km/h and sprinted a kilometer in 28.76seconds. The RSi had a near identical twin called the RXi which was supposed to be a “more refined” version of the RSi but wasn’t. It had the same engine but only managed an 8.49sec sprint to 100, had a top speed of 206km/h and ran to 1 kilometer in 29.56seconds.

The successor to the Corolla RSi was supposed to be the RunX RSi, as per pic below. It had a 141kW 1.8 litre 2ZZ-GE engine. 0-100km/h took 8.58 seconds, it had a top speed of 205km/h and it’s engine used to scream because the VVTLi system only on it gave you the full 141kW only at 6000rpm. Top end was 8200rpm so you really had to rev the beans out of it to get performance.
In a way, the RunX RSi killed the “RSi” name because it just wasn’t good enough… Not fast enough, it became a hatchback meaning less space and that screamer of an engine… The GTi of the same era(Golf V) had 6 more kW and 100Nm more torques and was 1.3 seconds faster to 100km/h. Plus the Golf had a top speed of 235km/h.

And thus went a possibly good car and proceeded to fade into history. The RSi and the Corolla Sprinter models still has a cult following and Toyota hasn’t produced a decent enough successor in ages. The GT86 is seen as a high class sports car so it didn’t even make the cut.