Yup, that's what I have also read on the web. Once I saw on a forum, on an ae86 conversion build thread, the guy welded some chassis braces and as i remember he also added Hilux lsd + suspension parts along with other common Ae86 stuff. And about the handling, maybe you could upgrade the suspension.
Oh the cars, one i saw one at some sale a year back, now it's gone. The other was on paper about 6 months back. I checked them, just coz I was curious about them being the rarer model, not that i was serious about buying any