William Yarwood's 1,354-HP 2JZ Corolla KE20 Is Built to Run Sevens and Drive Home

There is a particular kind of madness that lives in Queensland, and Street Machine has a theory about it. As Kian Heagney wrote in the magazine's Sept. 4 feature, there is something about Queenslanders shoving huge engines into little chrome-bumper Japanese cars. William Yarwood's 1972 Toyota Corolla KE20 coupe is the latest proof: a 2JZ that made 1,354 hp at the hubs, 275 radials and a target in the seven-second zone.

What makes it more than a dyno sheet is the plan. This is a drag-and-drive car, built for Street Machine Drag Challenge, where the car has to drive between tracks on the road. It gets cruise control. It tows a trailer. It just also has a turbo about as big as your head, to borrow Street Machine's description.

A car that changed hands at the right time

Yarwood told Street Machine he has always liked old Corollas; they were what his crowd had on their provisional licenses as kids. He had been building a KE26 panel van when the costs started running away, and then this coupe came up for sale. He missed it the first time.

The buyer was Louis Younis, a fellow Drag Challenge regular and a 235 Aspirated class winner. The Corolla was already a race car with a turbo LS, but Younis, in Yarwood's telling to the magazine, is an aspirated Torana guy and it was not for him. A few months later it was back on the market, and Yarwood and a mate struck a deal in which the mate essentially paid for the LS driveline and Yarwood got the car. They drove to Sydney to collect it a few months before Drag Challenge 2025.

Rather than rush it, Yarwood ran his proven eight-second Toyota Supra Mk4 at DC 2025, a car that had won the Tuff Mounts Six Cylinder class the year before. The Supra became a test mule. The engine, turbo and transmission now in the Corolla were proven in the Supra first.

Ready-to-go chassis, take two

Buying a painted car with chassis work and a nine-inch already done was supposed to save time and money. It did not. Yarwood took it to Jamie at ET Chassis, and with the car going to radial tires, they stripped the suspension, differential and anti-roll bar and started over. The car came back with a new four-link rear, an Enemies Racing anti-roll bar, transmission supports, a new steering setup and a new floor pan. Yarwood joked to Street Machine about why he had bothered buying a ready-to-go chassis.

Fitting the 2JZ and a Powerglide from the Supra took real surgery: the firewall was recessed four inches, and the steering column was redesigned around Yarwood's driving position. A custom intercooler measuring 600 by 300 by 115 mm, about 23.6 by 11.8 by 4.5 inches, is squeezed in behind the original grille.

The engine

The 2JZ is a Dart-based combination, refreshed before it went in. It is still 3.0 liters with a standard Toyota crank, but with Nitto rods and JE pistons. The head carries BC Stage 3 cams, and a Toomey intake takes two sets of injectors, 1,650cc primaries and 2,400cc secondaries. It runs straight E85 for now, with room for methanol later.

The headline part is the turbo, a Garrett GTX5020 pushing up to 45 psi. A Haltech Nexus R5 runs the engine and driveline, and a Haltech PD16 replaces the 54-year-old Corolla wiring for lights, wipers and the rest of the street car functions. On Scott Hoffman's dyno at Cleveland Dyno, the package made 1,354 hp at the hubs. Yarwood told the magazine there is more in it, but from here Hoffman will tune it at the track.

Street car details

Drive-by-wire throttle through the Nexus R5 means cruise control, which Yarwood told Street Machine makes a huge difference on long road legs. A 46-liter fuel cell, about 12 gallons, fills the trunk next to a catch tank that collects breathers from the cooling system, differential and transmission. A Haltech uC-10 display gives him the numbers. He admitted the interior is basic and that the Kirkey seats left him numb on the first drive out to the strip.

That first outing was at Willowbank Raceway for licensing passes, and it already ran an 8.2 at 140 mph. Yarwood told Street Machine he lifted at the eighth-mile on the third pass, then remembered he had to get back on it to deploy the parachutes at the quarter, so he was off the throttle for four to five seconds and still went 8.2.

The target

Yarwood built the car in about six months of spare time around his go-kart racing business, doing as much as he could himself, including the engine. His goal for Drag Challenge 2026, which runs Oct. 27 to 31, is to average a second quicker than the Supra at each track, which he puts in the 7.3 to 7.5 range. Before that, the magazine lists Jamboree, Kenda, Allstars Drag & Drive and Six-Banger Nats as shakedowns.

A 54-year-old Corolla with cruise control and a 1,354-hp 2JZ is exactly the kind of car that makes drag-and-drive events worth watching. Whether it hits sevens or not, it already won the argument about what a little Toyota coupe can be.