By Speedhunters

Car Culture At Large

To tell you the truth I was probably more excited about seeing Hideo Itakura’s RA28 Celica GT liftback in Okayama than Yoshioka’s FD. At lest it was out on track drifting! There is something so cool about seeing old vintage cars going sideways… …especially when they look this good doing it! The Celica actually debuted into the drifting scene late last year at Rd.11 of the MSC championship. Continue reading at Speedhunters

By Dino Dalle Carbonare

By Ben Schaffer

The Real JDM

In the world of blogs it seems like everyone takes content from everyone else. Although I try to keep a relatively high percentage of original content here, I’m not too concerned with attempting to be above everyone else…and sometimes I feel the nessesity to “borrow” content when I feel its appropriate. This is one of those times…

I stole this idea from here  who stole it from the OG source Modena Photo found here. All credit is due to the man above from Australia who happens to have some really amazing pictures he’s taken on his Flickr account.

Of all of his photos, this TA22 Celica built by the mysterious “Fonzie” is what caught my eye. This classic Celica is a perfect mix of old school JDM tuning with Bosozoku elements of style. Seeing an exposed oil cooler and hoses out the front of the car always gives me a smile. When I was first learning about JDM tuning in the mid 1990s seeing cars like this always shocked me with their rawness and gangster attitude. It takes a certain kind of swagger to rock a car like this right.

Continue reading after the jump!

Continue reading "Fonzie’s TA22 Celica" »

By Speedhunters

Car Culture At Large

I’m not quite done with my Garage Boso features yet, here’s one more Boso-built car you guys might be interested in. The RA21 Celica above is owned by Option Magazine and Tokyo Auto Salon founder Daijiro Inada – a very well known personality both in Japan and abroad. Dai spends a lot of time in LA visiting his brother and taking part in the automotive culture here, so he decided to build a car to enjoy in sunny SoCal. After picking up the project, Dai brought the car over to Garage Boso where the guys got to work on transforming it into a modern kyuu-sha hot rod. Continue reading at Speedhunters

By Mike Garrett

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

The latest in the saga of the RWD Toyota/Subaru coupe is that it will hit showrooms in 2010 as a Celica. Pretty cool, and it makes a lot of sense, but given all the abrupt shifts in this story line, I’ll believe it when I see it. Via Jalopnik

By Speedhunters

Car Culture At Large

This car has seen drag strips, circuits and has even been to Tsukuba to show the Japanese how it’s done in the UK. Fensport became immortal after making a 2.1l turbo 3s-gte powered Corolla that had AWD and was pushing 650bhp. But what do you make after that? Fensport wanted to make another all round car that was capable of winning quarter mile runs and hold its own during Time Attack battles.

They came up with this AWD Celica with another 3s-gte engine but this time it had 576bhp at the hubs. The base car was a generation 7 TRD M-sport Celica that was lighter and stronger. It is a special edition made from the factory that was specifically build for motorsport, it’s even lighter than the older GT4 Celica models. So you could think it was light enough, but knowing Fensport it wasn’t the case. Continue reading at Speedhunters

By Jeroen Willemsen

By Speedhunters

Car Culture At Large

The ST205 Celica GT-Four is the final evolution in all wheel drive Celica technology. Just like its predecessors, the ST165 (1988-1989), and ST185 (1991-1993), the ST205 is powered by Toyota’s mighty 3SGTE engine, a 2.0 liter turbocharged engine that pushes power to all four wheels. If I’m not mistaken, the last generation of 3SGTE, as found in the ST205, makes 240-250hp.

When I was just out of high school, I remember wanting to own ST185 and ST205 Celica GT-Fours sooooo bad. I had so many magazine clippings with Celicas from Japan; I just couldn’t stop thinking about them. The idea of a turbocharged Yamaha head twincam 3SGTE and all-wheel drive had me convinced. (Until I began autocrossing with my first AE86.)

Imagine my delight when I spotted this ST205 GT-Four in a parking lot right down the road from Nurburgring’s Grand Prix course. Continue reading at Speedhunters

By Antonio Alvendia

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

I remember when my friend’s parent’s bought one of these new in the early 80s. Brings back memories! You definitely don’t see many as clean as Bindanoe’s ’84 Celica.

People often ask me how to get their car in the magazine. Sometimes it’s luck–which is technically when preparation meets opportunity. One of our readers, Koichiro Kanda, posted some photos of his S2000-powered ’71 Celica on our message board a while back. Our interest was piqued, and while visiting Southern California our art director photographed the car. Fast forward to today, and the issue featuring Koichiro’s car is now on the newsstands. Cool, huh?

Editor’s note: coincidentally, Jen saw this same Celica on CarDomain a while back and put it in the blog!

The British site Retro Rides has a really great "Readers Rides" section. I love this ’81 Celica with a Rover V8. Two more pics after the jump, but you can get the specs and see a ton of pics from the build in this thread.

Continue reading "Retro Rides" »

Pedro’s done some perfectly gorgeous bodywork on his 1977 Celica within some obviously limited means: in one of the pics on his ride page, it looks at first glance like he might have the car on a body jig to sandblast the underside. Look closer and you’ll see that it’s actually propped up on a cross-member, a tree branch, and a pile of tires. Nonetheless, he managed to do a very thorough and beautiful resto. One interesting custom touch was these late-model tail lights that were painstakingly adapted to the car’s rear clip. They look really familiar, don’t they? Bet you knew what they were from before you even got to his page.