In our obsessive walking, I notice whenever there’s a change of interesting cars in the neighborhood; or anywhere in this whole side of town, actually. So I perked up when I saw this vintage Celica appear some blocks from our house: welcome to the ‘hood!
I love the front end on these; such utterly pure Japanese design, in the decade when the Japanese designers were really coming into their own after their 60s fling with hired Italian designers. The result was obviously a bit uneven, but even the worst of them have eye-catching details.
The other great detail is this cabin exhaust vent; or I assume it’s actually functional. Either way, what a fine casting during a time when you would not find something like this on an American low-end car. Even the luxury makes were ditching big metal castings at the time for plastic moldings of all shapes and sizes. There’s a great future in plastics! Think about it. Will you think about it?
Well, the plastics on the interior certainly haven’t held up all that well. But then this Celica has probbaly clicked off some serious miles over the decades.
If I had to guess, it would be that the legendary 2.0 18-R SOHC four would start up readily enough. The 90 hp it made sounds modest in today’s world, but then these skinny little coupes weighed all of 2200 lbs.
Just needs a bit of air…hopefully. I’d like to encounter it on the street next time.
I did a more in depth CC on the gen1 Celica here: CC 1974 Celica ST Coupe – Betting On The Wrong Pony
Those were beautiful cars. Much underrated back at the time and now highly sought after.
Nice find. I agree: great front end.
It must have been great to be an up and coming Japanese salaryman driving one of these in the early seventies. Japan, recovered and on the upswing, taking it’s place in the first world. Your career on the upswing with it. The new Japanese Celica part of all that,” to add a little thunder to your life” as the ad yesterday said.
I remember when the Celica first appeared on the streets. Kind of a Asian Mustang with a long hood and short deck. Within easy reach for those who could not afford the big block Mustangs and Barracudas. Great find!!
The “Asian Mustang” description completely fits, and even some of the proportions were the same. But the details are all its own, and result in a car that references the original without being one bit derivative. Very nice, just needs a little love to come back to its former glory!
I always did kinda like the Asian Mach I…
Nice find, and certainly showing signs of its age and service, and ability to keep on going
Nice find. But will it be brought back to life as an original or slammed, winged and painted yellow?
or turned into a grifter… or drifter. Ah, you know what I mean,
I would think being painted yellow would be fine. Most of this Gen and the generation of celica that followed this that I have seen over the years were painted a mustard colored yellow shade.
The liftback of this particular generation(70-early 77) makes the car look very Mustangish from the side.
I like the next gen(77-81) better(especially the liftback version) because I think they totally nail the design of what a small personal coupe should look like.
I remember when these 1st landed at U.S. dealers…I dragged my father and a friend down to a small dealer in West Memphis, Arkansas to look at and perhaps drive one. That tiny dealership had just one, pale blue, Celica and it was already sold. It and a Creamsicle colored Corolla sat outside the “showroom”, with the Celica sitting on 4 flat tires (to make sure ABSOLUTELY no one drove that car) and the Corolla coupe sporting an automatic transmission.
The salesman wasn’t all that knowledgeable about his product, and between the location and the poor sales performance, that dealership didn’t last.
When visiting Japan in the 80s, you almost never saw Celicas or MR2s, except for examples driven/owned by U.S. service people.
Have always liked these! The flattened front-end restyle was slightly busted, but the rake of the original fascia still looks great. These cars remind me of the beginning of the 70’s “The Incredible Hulk” TV show, where Bruce Banner flips his ST over in fury after injuring himself changing a tire.
I love 1st Gen Celicas, especially the coupes.
My mom had a ’77 ST coupe 4-speed when I was born. She loved that car and still talks about it today.
Here’s her on the left, her sister on the right Easter 1985 (I’m on the way, I was born August of that year) with the Celica in the background
I would’ve chased your aunt relentlessly
Hopefully its owner can find the time to restore it to its former glory. They’re great looking cars.
I always have to wonder with many of these pictures, which came first – was the owner already residing in Eugene when he found the perfect car for the environs or did the owner of the car decide that he needed to move to Eugene so the car would be “at home”? I mean most of these were NOT purchased new and used for a whole lifetime with the same owner.
An interesting point you raised.
You know, Paul took me to task one day for accusing (in a good-natured way) him and the citizenry out there being all retired hippies. Was I right? I’m starting to think I was right all along, for I wouldn’t be caught dead in some of those clapped-out bombs on the road around there, “classic” or not!
I wonder if ANYONE buys cars new, or is Eugene a depressed area?
Paul – your turn.
I’ve wondered the same thing. Definitely a different auto culture out there than here in the Midwest. Some of that is due to the milder climate, I’m sure, but I think cultural differences are the main reason.
Given all the dealerships here, I would answer with a resounding “yes” that new cars are purchased here. Also used cars. Also there are plenty of hippies, retired and otherwise, in Eugene. Also even more non-hippies, of various age, ethnicity, size, and profession.
It’s a wonderful neighbourhood with loads of character. It’s real people doing real stuff. Eugene is a very funky place and it’s all good funk. It reminds me a lot of Vancouver Island.
These cars were considered very cool and desirable when they came out. The interiors had excellent materials.
Hard to say. This house looks like a rental, and I’m guessing these folks moved in recently, with the Celica. Or possibly they just acquired it, or it was being stored elsewhere. It’s hard to say for sure.
But yes, in the land of rust-healing rains, a lot of folks have older cars around, in one way or another, either as drivers or projects.
I’d say it’s really a West Coast phenomena (car culture and no rust) exaggerated by the fact that lots of folks come to Eugene for the laid-back culture, which means folks can keep a few old cars around and nobody’s likely to complain. And the fact that we’re not a commuting/driving culture here; most work near by and many even use bikes/bus to get to work. That means mileage accumulates more slowly.
There’s also a bit of an anti-consumer culture on top of that: vintage is cool. Most new cars aren’t, unless it’s a practical Subaru or such. In this part of town, folks are not into showing off fancy new cars. That’s not hip.
I’d say it is a Oregon and Washington State thing and not a West Coast thing. California has a whole host of laws on the books that empower busy bodies with nothing better to do in their lives. One of which is that anybody can complain about somebody else’s old car and the state will send a letter offering to buy it to scrap it.
I was in the service when these made their appearance, and the first time I saw one on base, I thought it was a pretty cool-looking little car. After all, it was a pillarless hardtop, so what’s not to like, huh?
Notice the high beltline? Shades of things to come!
What I and a buddy couldn’t quite figure out was how to pronounce “Celica”. He pronounced it as: “Sil-EEK’-uh.” Him, being a Toyota Corolla wagon owner and from a Toyota family, well, he had to be right!
It was a while before I heard the name correctly pronounced. Such travails.
Wonder what they were like to own and drive?
I could almost carry one of those around in my ’64 Chevy convertible back then!
It’s funny but in Britain for example they do pronounce it like your buddy did. So both are correct I suppose. Another example is the Subaru Impreza, over there its a hard Zed, so it sounds like Impretsa.
Call me old-school, but I’ve always preferred this generation of Toyota Celica. I has perhas the best looking body, whether it’s Liftback or Coupe.
One of the few Toyotas I lust over.
x2!
This car has some interesting design features, but overall I find it to be stubby and chubby. It’s too tall. The front turn signals don’t fit in well. Overall, not very graceful to my eyes.
Granted, by 1973 standards it isn’t awful. But I don’t think it’s good either.
I’ve always liked these, and I came close to buying a brand new ’75. A guy at work had a ’76 coupe maybe 10+ years ago, but he sold it and moved on, and I haven’t seen one since.
A nice little car , hopefully it’ll soon be returned to daily service and maybe even a good paint job & trim .
-Nate
Such nice looking cars back in the day. Certainly worth restoring if you can scrounge up parts.
This car always strikes me as a rip off of the 1970 Ford Torino.
Purely coincidentally, though, as the Celica would have been in the final stages of being readied for production when the 1970 Torino debuted. There was a 1969 Toyota show car that previewed the design themes, although the concept version was pushed further and had sort of a contemporary Bertone vibe.
how ironic…these Celicas reminded everyone of the Mustang….and now when I see a new Mustang I think Celica…
Oh, wow, my sister had 2 STs when I was younger – a blue one of these and then a silver ’79-’81 era one. I can’t remember how the first one died, but I know she ran the second one totally dry of oil and seized the engine (on a major highway, no less!). Car maintenance was not her strong suit! I think that second ST was replaced with a brand-new white 1988 Merkur XR4Ti (I learned how to drive a stick on that).
I remember driving a friend’s four speed…after getting into fourth, it felt like there should be two more gears, the car must have been turning 3k+ RPM at 60!
Most were 5 speeds or auto those manual 5 speeds found their way into numerous other cars great for conversions even behind 6cylinder engines.
There was a five-speed available. IIRC the (somewhat) more sporting version of the ST, the GT, had a five-speed manual as standard equipment. Also a full set of gauges (which, being made by Toyota, actually worked). A friend bought a ’72 (?) GT used around ’77: fun little bomb, and a more sophisticated piece of engineering than the rubbishy pony-cars most of us teenaged mooks were buying back then.
Attached: A (somewhat) modded GT from a recent car show. Apologies for lack of focus: pic is best of a bad bunch.
I had a red ’72 as my first car. The early ones had no bumper guards and less elaborate trim details, along with the two color (white and gold, on the red) mid-door stripes on just the front half of the car. These features accentuated the roundness of the rear of the car and the squared-off design of the front. It always looked, to me, like two different cars, attached to each other halfway back on the door panel. The overall design was still handsome, however.
The bodywork is extremely thin, in typical ’70s Japanese fashion, which is going to make sorting out the body panels on this example a difficult exercise. The engine and suspension on these are rather agricultural in nature, as they were on the original straight six Mustang. The best feature, IMHO, was the early Celica dashboard and interior, which showed a style and integration far superior to most Japanese cars of the period, and second only to the Z-car.
The factory radio antenna, on the right side fender top, just forward of the windshield, was spring loaded and could be pushed into the fender when the car was parked. Turning on the radio would “spring” the antenna back into position. There was the comprehensive tool kit, and a miniature corded hanging trouble light, that could be plugged into a receptacle in the glove box. Unfortunately, the plug was identical to the ones in a US house, and when little bro plugged it into the 120v circuit in the garage, that thing exploded into pieces.
The early cars had the fuel filler hidden behind an unmarked plain black panel between the taillights. On my first trip to the gas station after purchase, neither me nor the attendant could find the filler. Tracing the fuel tank filler hose through the trunk gave us our answer.
There was not much that could be easily done to hop up the 18R-C engine in these, and Toyota USA offered no sporting parts for them. After the aftermarket universal chin spoiler, fog lights, and slotted mags were installed, there was not much more easy stuff to be done. I envied the Datsun owners and all the cool bolt-ons available for their cars from the factory and the aftermarket. I discovered the pleasures of the rotary engine when my friend’s sister’s RX2 utterly destroyed my car (and my other friend’s 510) in the stoplight races, and the Celica was quickly sold, in favor of a string of Mazdas.
Whatever you do , dont turn on the wipers !!!
By the early 80s, you could get hop up parts for the 8/18R-C engine. Hooker had a header, even for my ’70 Corona Mark II. Cams were available. Weber carb swaps were common.Could not afford any of these as a broke high school student. So, I built my Mark II myself. Results were rewarding. Used a Holley-Weber carb off a Chrysler K-car I got for free. Oregon Cam Grinders ground a cam for me for $40. Did not do a header, these engines have an excellent dual outlet exhaust manifold, but did upgrade rest of exhaust system. My Mark II showed its taillights to many of the muscle cars in our high school parking lot, circa 1982. And hot Jap cars was still an oxymoron then.
I remember the TV ad., a kid making car noises, accelerating quickly through gear changes.
I traded my POS 1971 Opel Sport Coupe for a 1972 Celica ST very much like the subject car, only almost new. The Celica was better built, more stylish, and very much more dependable than the Opel. The only advantage the Opel had was its handling.
only??
That was the primary feature of this class of car.
if its for sale please contact with me : milanqatar@hotmail.com
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I’m a proud owner of one of these cool cars, picked it up a couple of years ago. It’s a California girl! I’m enjoying tinkering with it and driving it around. So many people think it’s a mustang 2. ? obviously aren’t car people or just too young. Peace to the Celica lovers!!