After repeatedly damaging a 200 PS 4A-G, one AE86 owner took a radical route out: an Altezza-sourced 3S-GE, set farther back behind a cut bulkhead, backed by a six-speed gearbox and a two-stage nitrous system. Motor Fan has published a feature on the build.
The starting point was a fully built 4A-G making around 200 PS. That is an impressive figure from 1.6 liters of naturally aspirated twin-cam, but Motor Fan describes the resulting setup as highly stressed. The article is blunt about the failure mode: over-rev the engine through a missed shift and a blown engine is the likely result. According to Motor Fan, the owner suffered several engine failures after relatively minor shifting errors caused over-revving.
The swap: an Altezza 3S-GE, stock internally
The replacement is the 2.0-liter 3S-GE from the Toyota Altezza, quoted in the feature at 200 PS in standard form — the same headline power as the built 4A-G it replaced, but from a larger engine left standard inside. The intake side is not stock: the car runs a Naprec 70 mm throttle body on a one-off surge tank.
Getting it in was not a bolt-in. The shop cut into the bulkhead to set the engine farther back in the bay — what the Japanese feature calls a mid-mount, meaning a rearward front-engine position rather than a mid-engine layout — and transplanted the Altezza's transmission tunnel and six-speed gearbox at the same time. The work was carried out by Technical Shop Anfini (テクニカルショップアンフィニ) in Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture.
Cutting structure to reposition the engine, then importing the donor car's tunnel to suit, is a considerably bigger commitment than pushing the 4A-G further. The stated aim was to get away from a highly stressed 1.6, though the feature offers no running data on how the nitrous-assisted 3S-GE has held up.
Two-stage nitrous adds up to 100 PS
The car runs two nitrous nozzles rated at roughly 50 PS each, for 100 PS when both are flowing. Motor Fan describes the first stage as a 250 PS setup and the second, on a button, as a 300 PS setup — figures derived from the engine's quoted output plus the nozzles' nominal ratings, not from a dyno. The system is set not to inject below 85 percent throttle, so tire warm-up laps run without it. Delivery is handled by the shop's own NCS control system, with engine management on a programmable ECU.
On a car the feature describes as weighing under a metric ton, those numbers are substantial. The owner's own assessment is about drivability rather than peak figures: with the extra power and torque, he says, the car became much easier to drive both on the street and on circuit.
A different answer to the same question
Most AE86 stories resolve into either originality or a highly strung 4A-G. This one takes a third path: a larger engine that is standard internally, plus nitrous for short bursts. It sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from Tech Art's lifetime 7A-powered AE86, which pushes the Toyota four-cylinder family further rather than stepping outside it. Both are legitimate readings of what an AE86 is for, and both are responses to the same problem: the compromises involved in extracting big power from the original 1.6.