If you don’t know what you want, you don’t know what you will end up with.
I was sixteen, I had been saving my money, I had my license, I had been driving the family’s Mercury wagon, I had been lusting for the family’s Mustang, and I had been devouring years’ worth of car magazines in order to help me choose my first car to buy.
As the search went on, there was only one obvious choice. It had to be smaller, powerful, sporty, look nice and attractive, reliable, mainstream, and economical to own and operate. The car magazines all liked it, they were everywhere, and the 11 second zero-to-sixty looked very good on paper, better than almost all its peers. The fact that it was a Ford product (as I, too, was the product of a “Ford family—that almost always bought Fords), and vaguely resembled my lusted-for Mustang in red, if one squinted very hard, then the hunt was to be over before it began. The V-6 Capri, 1972 or 1973, that was it. Enough said.
A Ford. A baby Mustang. Power. Styling. It’s German. Make mine a V-6, please.
I had one advantage, going in. I was a bit younger than my friends, so I got to ride in and test drive their cars, to see what I liked and what I didn’t. A Vega, a 510, some VWs, a Camaro, a Mitsubishi Dodge Colt. They all had their pluses and minuses, but what I realized was that, just like the Mercury wagon I had been driving, I needed to drive each car on its own terms. The VW Beetle had its own way of being driven, which was different than the Camaro, and different again from the 510. The foreign cars generally had a better integrated set of controls than the domestic cars did. This meant that while the car may not do everything “well”, there was also the matter of whether it did everything in a “nice” way.
The big wagon didn’t do much well, but it did it all very “nicely”, in the way the controls worked together and everything felt “right”, given the limitations of the vehicle in the first place. Doing things “nicely” mattered in the car I might buy. (The family Mustang had a bit of a deficit there, as it actually felt very archaic in the way it drove and in the way the steering and handling functioned—that’s an important reason why I didn’t simply shop for an old Mustang).
So I looked around (dealers, the classified ads in the newspaper, and the weekly Auto Trader print magazine were the only resources available, other than driving by a car parked along the side of the roads with a “for sale” sign on it). I located a V-6 Capri on a local dealer lot, and got my test drive. Uh-oh. The engine did not “feel” or sound fast, it seemed to sort of peter out at the top end. The steering was very heavy and the “feel” of it was not to my liking (a lot of this is subjective, I know, but I had my definite preferences). The driver’s seat was hard and uncomfortable to me, the shift lever didn’t have a “connected” feel, and the relationship between the seat, the pedals, and the steering wheel felt all “wrong” to me. It simply wouldn’t do, at all. Back to square one.
Auf Wiedersehen, mein lieber Freund. It’s not you, it’s me.
I took another look at the 510 and the Dodge Colt. There was nothing wrong with either one, but they had nothing particular going for them, aesthetically, even though they were “nice” to drive, if a bit underpowered. I suppose if I were “performance” focused and interested in modifying a car, the 510 may have appealed very much. But I was more interested in buying and driving something “out of the box”, so what I saw was what I would be getting.
I wanted something nice looking to drive, not to modify. OK car, but nothing to look at, out of the box, and kind of tinny and underpowered.
I started just showing up at car dealerships, and seeing what they recommended. As I was young, my Dad had to be there for me to get a test drive. He had opinions and preferences. I also think that the dealers perhaps had some oddball cars on their lots, and their knowing up front that I didn’t have a lot of money to spend, they would steer me to the odd thing in the third row that they couldn’t move.
So I tried an Opel GT, an MG Midget, some sort of Renault, a Pinto, another Vega, and so it went. A Plymouth Scamp was actually rather impressive in the midst of all this, with the slant-6, nice torque, reasonable comfort, and controls that didn’t feel too archaic. It also had very low mileage and a fair price. It had obviously been a “grandma car”, and it looked to me like one, and I just couldn’t go there, the aesthetics were off for me. In hindsight, it was the best of a rather motley lot of choices.
Good all around, great nowhere, but too “grandma” or “hand-me-down” looking, for a young car guy spending his own money.
Fate finally walked in the door. Visiting another lot, the salesman steered me towards a rotary Mazda. My Dad finally put his foot down, saying “no way in a million years…”, not reliable (after test driving an MG, ha!). The salesman responded with “how about a Toyota”, as those are reliable. Voila, a Celica, a car which I didn’t really know existed. Why not, I am not sure. Most likely, because it was out of my price range. Like a BMW 2002 or a later model Volvo, they were just too expensive and never made the list. The Celica on the dealer lot was in the $2,000’s, but I had a $1,000’s budget.
But the hook had been set. The car, inside and out, was very attractive looking. As long as it drove like the other Japanese cars I had driven, it would check the “nice” boxes, both aesthetically and mechanically. Sign me up! I just had to find one at the right price. I finally did, at $1,800, but it had 85k miles. However, Toyotas are reliable, right? Right?
The car was all original and not monkeyed with (that mattered a lot to me), and it was in red. Instead of a red Capri mini-Mustang, it would be a red Celica mini-Mustang. Done.
Exactly like the one I found, right down to the factory hubcaps.
A neighbor actually had one of these, in dark blue. It was a very attractive car, but it had wide-set aluminum five-slot wheels. They transformed the look of the car. Next stop was Pep Boys and a set of new aluminum wheels. Along with the nice dashboard, exterior styling, and an overall sporty look, but solid and pedestrian mechanicals, it was the Mustang experience, all over again, in a smaller and newer package.
Nice wheels! I passed on the vinyl roof, though.
So I had my first car, and away I went. It was a completely pleasant driving experience, though not anything special. A bit down on power to my liking, and the engine got noisier, in a very agricultural-sounding way, rather than more powerful, when I revved the engine. But, all things considered, it seemed like a fair trade-off all around, given my relatively modest budget.
I like it when things look attractive and are complete. The well-styled dashboard, steering wheel, and interior, and the full instrumentation, were all very nice.
That’s when reality and 85k miles set in. There was no internet, and, short of major brand-wide identifiable mechanical issues (say, Vega or Mazda), there was no information to be had. But the engine in these early cars did not like unleaded fuel, and would promptly burn the valves and disintegrate the top end of the engine. Many hundreds of dollars after my car suddenly started making awful noises and losing power, I had a new dealer-installed cylinder head and a nice cardboard tag hanging from the dashboard, stating “leaded fuel only”. A few months later, the engine ate the timing chain, and I was stuck along the edge of the freeway. At some point, one says “well, I have all the expensive weak points fixed and paid for, so let’s soldier on”, which is what I did.
I was still good to go with the Toyota, now a year later. But then my eyes were turned by another. Recall the Vega, 510, VWs, and so on of my friends. We would entertain ourselves late at night by going out to the deserted Otay Lakes, and match racing each other. We were all slow, but fairly well matched, and would race up to 50 or 60 mph or so, furiously revving up the engines and dropping the clutches to launch, and then struggling to gain speed from there, as the four-cylinder engines labored…
One night, my buddy with a VW Beetle had broken his car. He brought his sister’s sleeper commuter car. It promptly waxed all of us, one by one. He could chirp the tires hard going into second gear. This mattered a lot to a group of testosterone-fueled car guys. The Toyota went up for sale the next day, and I went shopping for a sleeper commuter car. A guy has to know his priorities…
Wow!., Americas 2nd best selling import ,after the Beetle was not for you. Strange some would say to prefer the ” Mustang ” from Japan rather than the ” Mustang ” from Germany. All down to personal preference .
“The foreign cars generally had a better integrated set of controls than the domestic cars did. ”
The light controls on the stalk. The emergency brake lever next to the driver’s seat for example. Dual side mirrors, standard.
I wanted a 76 Celica hatchback as my first car. It really looked like a mini Mustang fastback. But budget was the problem for me as well. So I ended up with a Pinto. I should have waited and saved more.
A great Sunday morning read! I’m glad it was you and not me who was disillusioned by the Capri. I don’t think I could handle that – I also wanted one (a ’76 Capri II) as a teenager.
One look at the pictures of the first Celica notchback (in small bumper form), and it’s obvious that the Celica (derived from Latin coelica, for “heavenly”) was an aptly named car. Just beautifully styled, proportioned, and detailed – inside and out.
After reading all the car magazines and road tests that I could get my hands on, I learned a couple of things in the real world. One is that one’s preferences are a large part subjective, and not always rational. Two is that the road tests could communicate basic mechanical competence or incompetence, but tended to go middle-of-the-road on subjective elements, knowing that being critical was often unfair to the manufacturers, when dealing with subjective issues.
That said, the magazines would certainly criticize things like the rear brakes prematurely locking up, fundamental drivability issues, rust issues from the factory, or parts misfitted or falling off the car as it goes down the road.
In my opinion, the Japanese manufacturers did a very good job, in the early ‘70s, in making their cars pleasant to drive in a tactile and driver friendly way. Their offerings were not particularly capable or sturdy, but they held together in a very satisfactory way for the first few years and tens of thousands of miles. They were nimble and responsive within their not-particularly high limits. And they had a “lightness” of driver feel, likely partly attributable to their skinny, slick tires with small tire patches, along with little unsprung suspension weight and mass. This was in contrast to the relatively truck-like “feel” of American cars, and the more solid, slightly more ponderous “feel” of the better European offerings, which, after all, were generally heavier, more substantial cars. The Capri certainly seemed more robust, from a fender and door sheet metal thickness perspective, than the Celica or most of its Japanese peers.
The Celica may have subjectively felt light compared to a Capri or Manta, but it wasn’t. The earliest cars were 2270lbs, about a small passenger’s amount more than the Opel (or a Corona, for that matter). Capri list weights are inconsistent from my findings, but at most, a 2000 Capri was a draw.
You speak the truth when you note that some cars feel “right” and others don’t. And, of course, “right” is not universally applicable.
It is interesting that your experience with the Celica was so repair-intensive. We hear so many stories about old Toyotas and how nothing ever broke, but you demonstrate that such was not always true. And yes, in those pre-internet times, good information was hard to come by.
Pretty much the only resources to research reliability back then were examining the dot charts in the CR paperback annual issue and whatever your friends or relatives had experienced.
The issue with burning the valves seemed to be specific to the unleaded fuel of the day, which was widely introduced in California after the car had been built. Also, California may have been ahead of the rest of the world in widely introducing unleaded fuel. Add in the high mileage on this particular car, and I may have experienced something that most people didn’t endure.
The Toyota 18-RC engine seemed to be engineered just fine for the leaded fuel which was universal when the engine was designed and the car was built. One can’t really fault Toyota for failing to anticipate a situation that didn’t exist at the time. The 20-R engine that came soon after did not have the valve burning issue, as it was designed to run on unleaded fuel.
You were correctly aware of the early R-series Achilles heel; low octane unleaded. They used a reverse-flow cylinder head that made them more susceptible to pre-ignition and detonation with any low-grade fuel, particularly if they ever ran hot. The re-engineering to a cross-flow hemispherical head with the 1975 20R solved the problem. It’s also why this wasn’t heard about in similar vintage Corollas; the 2T four found in the majority was a hemispherical cross flow design from the start. The early Toyota R and K motors weren’t bad units, but it really wasn’t until the T series and the 20 series R and onward that they really became anvil-like.
I too well recall the days of “racing” my buddies with (by today’s standards) laughably underpowered cars, but it isn’t what you’re driving that matters as much as what it is that you’re running against so it was plenty of fun nonetheless. A second gear chirp surely was bragging material.
With the benefit of hindsight, the Celica was likely the best pick of the bunch by a country mile in terms of longevity, durability, coupled with immediate style points, so an excellent if slightly accidental choice.
Looking forward to next week already…
I had never noticed it before the starting in Cologne remark, but from the rear 3/4 angle the original Celica looks a lot like a slightly baroque MKIII Cortina 2 door.
The 2 door Celica is also more attractive than its liftback sibling which was often described as looking like a fastback Mustang
Interesting I too drove a lot of cars before I bought one, the wrong one,some were nice, some were not,VW, slow not nice no lights at night noisy, Ford Escort ok but the gear lever came out in my hand shifting, Vauxhall Viva HA fun but that was with stiffened suspension, HC awfull after that HA,Ford Zodiac MK2 this was more like it plenty of power great at wheelspin off the line, it had triple SUs and extractors, Morris Minor ok it got me my license but my grandmothers one died mechanically at 40,000 miles,
Nobody I knew had a Japanese car they were quite rare here in the early 70s and the few I saw had rust holes already.
Driving many different cars helps one zero in on what matters, and in defining one’s preferences. Most cars can be easily endured, and if one doesn’t know otherwise, then there is no basis for being able to compare and choose. I have always loved rental cars and dealer service loaner vehicles, because I can try something different and learn about what is out there.
By the early to mid-‘70s, Japanese cars were extremely common in Southern California. Datsun and Toyota, especially, had been selling like hotcakes from about 1970. Their rusting issues were not particularly relevant to most of So Cal.
It looks like you ended up with the best choice after your protracted search. I have always liked these first generation Celicas, particularly the ones with the small bumpers. They had mostly disappeared due to rust when I was in college in the 1980s, but a guy down the hall in my dorm was from California and was subjecting his 1972 Celica to the rigors of a salty Chicago winter. I got to ride in his car a few times and remember marveling at how nice it was inside compared to stuff like the Vegas, Chevettes, and Pintos I had known up to that point.
I always a fan of both the first and second gen Capri and can understand its appeal to a new driver. I remember reading in vintage road tests of the time was that there was a distinct tradeoff in opting for the V6. On the one hand, the bigger engine was more powerful, could handle air conditioning, and was more suitable for U.S. freeway driving. On the other hand, the four was lighter, returned better gas mileage, handled better and overall was a better match for the capabilities of the car, especially in 2.0 liter form. I wonder whether the author would have liked the feel of the four better than the tested V6?
It’s quite possible. My experience with the four cylinder Capri was a car equipped with an automatic, and, as it was a ‘71, it might have been the 1.6 liter. That automatic may have set me against the car a bit, just as my initial experience with the Datsun 510 was with an automatic. In those days, a four cylinder with an automatic just didn’t give a very impressive driving experience.
You made the right choice IMO .
-Nate
I was not aware of the leaded/unleaded fuel issue with the Celica engines. This little car caused quite a stir when it debuted. I remember going to a Toyota dealership crowded with young people checking a single model on display inside. As stated in the feature above, the Celica was really well designed inside and out and the integration of all the interior features bears that out.
The Celica was not on my radar when I was shopping for my first new car in 1974. It was slightly out of my budget and the 5mph bumpers ruined the car’s overall look as they did on many other cars back then. I also had an opportunity to test some small cars before buying and yes, they had their pluses and minuses. No car was just right, but I did find something that appealed to me on a number of levels.
The Celica is a really good example of what seemed to be a relatively specific response to the market here, but in reality was a completely different proposition back home, and a game changer in several ways. Prior to introduction, there really wasn’t a specialty market in Japan; early attempts were mostly 2 seat sports type cars like Nissan’s Fairlady roadsters, outrageously expensive prestige items like the Prince Skyline Sport, or both (2000GT). As the 1960’s came to a close, incomes were rising, the expansion of the highway system was well underway, and Japan’s households were becoming increasingly mobile. There were cars like the Galant hardtop and Bluebird coupe to tempt customers looking for flash, but they were extensions of cheaper mundane family cars, not products with a unique, distinct image. That changed with the Celica in December 1970; co-developed in tandem with the Carina along with a new family of T-series four cylinder engines, the ability to spread out investment costs to other lines allowed this decently practical image-based product to be obtainable to a whole new segment of buyers. The base price of a Celica 1400ET hardtop in Japan was the equivalent of approximately $1,600, only $150 more than a Corona 1500 deluxe sedan, and actually less than a Corolla 1200SL coupe. Four engines, three transmissions, four trims, and nine interior configurations were on offer to start; engines, body style, and trim would expand further as popularity of the car took off. Toyota desired this infinitely customizable approach to personalizing one’s Celica, and developed a system able to deliver a custom order car within two weeks from submission to the new Tsutsumi plant. As such, the best bits stayed home; the initial top grade 1600GT hardtop in Japan had much we initially or never received: standard 1.6 DOHC 2T-G four, close-ratio 5-speed, sport suspension and widened wheels, power windows, and the uppermost of the interior configurations minus the wood effects. This listed for $2,580, an absolutely screaming deal that could not be touched by anything else similar in Japan at the time. For reference, the very much simplified by comparison Celica ST we got was listed for $2,498, also a deal by our standards, but also a good indicator of how much money Toyota was pocketing on each one they imported. That price rose to $2,848 for 1972, by the way… Further improvements technologically came in 1973 with the DOHC 2.0 18R-G with a listed 145ps JIS rating, followed by a 130ps fuel injected SOHC 18R-E for 1974. Unsurprisingly, these first generation cars were the most successful Celicas in Japan over the entire production run that came to a close at the end of 2006.
So in other words, the Celica was the Mustang reincarnated in Japan. Essentially all the same hallmarks. And in the US market, it became the Japanese Mustang, at a time when the real thing had lost the plot.
The Celica was milestone car, no doubt about it.
I was struck by its ability to appeal to buyers that would never had bought a Japanese car otherwise. I worked on a construction crew in Iowa for a few months in 1972, and there were two young guys who had been on the crew for some time and both bought new cars almost simultaneously; one bought a plain base Mustang coupe, the other a Celica. The difference in how they were perceived in terms of their image was huge: the Mustang was seen as dorky and a shadow of its former self; the Celica was cool. As cool as a Mustang was in 1965.
This was in a little town in the Midwest and these guys were locals. The significance of this little moment was not lost on me.
Totally. The one distinct effect Celica had back home from Mustang here was the concept of singular options. Mustang or not, with vehicles here everything was an option, just maybe not to the extreme Mustang took it. Japan didn’t really do options; cars were equipped as is, and when there was choice, it was via trim level. You picked your trim, a color, and maybe an engine/transmission combo. Nothing remotely like the a la carte system we were accustomed to for years.
The Celica REALLY became like a Mustang when they added the hatchback model.
These first generation Celicas were seen everywhere in Australia back in the day, and quite rightly so. It was the best package.
The 180B SSS hardtop suffered from the usual 1970s Nissan styling funk, and didn’t drive as well as its looks and specification suggested. The Mazda RX4 had someone fussy styling (although I liked it) and the Wankel kept a few away anyway.
The Capri wasn’t as well built or finished, the Holden Torana cylinder coupes were not very stylish and somewhat crude, and the Alfa 105 Coupes and Fiat 124 Coupes whilst dynamically sharper instruments (at least relatively to the LT spec versions we got, and and we didn’t even get the warm ST version that much of Europe got), were more expensive and their metallurgical and to a somewhat less extent mechanical maladies acquired a look but don’t touch reputation.
Just by looking at the competency and thoroughness of the dashboard design alone, with the RX4 being the strongest rival here in the fit, finish and attention to detail department, was enough to demonstrate that this was a quality and durable car.
The fact that Toyota Australia pretty much never sold any sort of sporty/2 door Corona here meant than showroom traffic for this type of car was even more concentrated towards the Celica.
It would have been fascinating to see how a JDM spec 18RG GT Celica compared to the Fiat’s and Alfa’s in Australia. If the very limited information in English is any indication, the GTs at the very least would have been able to outrun the Italian. Even the Corona fitted with the same engine would get within a whisker of 200kmh.
I nearly bought a mint early version in the early 1990s (no heated rear window, fuel filler behind the licence plate) with plans to convert it into a JDM 1600 GT clone, but my 188cm frame could not get comfortable behind the wheel, due to lack or drivers seat travel. Strangely there was more room in my brother’s 124 Sport Coupe.
“One can’t really fault Toyota for failing to anticipate a situation that didn’t exist at the time. ”
You are correct sir.
Different car company, and we might have some deadly sins.
Haha, the picture of the green 1972 Celica used in this article is my car!!! It’s a original California car since new. I bought it in San Jose 4 years ago 🙂 Car is very mint, all original except for the after market rims (I do have the original Toyota hubcaps and rims for it too and can return it back to stock look again anytime lol)
A great example in a terrific early ‘70s color. I wish I could find my old photos of my red one, but yours is in better condition than mine ever was, while I had it.
I don’t find the steel wheels/factory wheel covers very attractive. At the least, they don’t do justice to the finely crafted exterior styling of the car. But just try to find a set today, at any price!
I had a ’75 Celica for a while, the larger bumper one, bought from the original owner, a friend of mine, for cheap. Being more a fan of European cars, I wasn’t wow’d by the styling, but I did and do think they did a better job with the large 5MPH bumpers than pretty much anyone else. Nor the handling, it might have been the worst handling car I’ve ever owned. At 8 years and 75K the interior was trashed, just sun, not abuse. I tried buffing out the paint, and just succeeded in getting down to primer, but finding no gloss. Reliability was ok, but nothing special. The alcohol oxygenated gas in California ate rubber parts in the fuel system quite well, including some inside the carb, all of which caused many headaches for years.
But for all it’s faults, many to be truthful, it ran great when it ran, which was most of the time. Yeah, it had more vacuum lines than a plate of spaghetti had noodles, but when many, nay, most, cars struggled with drivability, it was perfect. Turn the key, it started, idled nicely, actually very smoothly for a big 4 cylinder engine and ran well with no flat spots or bucking or any other odd stuff that was popular in the era. Very good power with the big 2200 engine, which was way undergeared for the torquey engine. In retrospect, a fine disposable car, a category most actually fall into. The disposable part, not the fine part. It was pretty much worn out when I sold it at 150K, the clutch was getting weak, tranny noisy, while it always burned some oil, it was burning more. No one fatal flaw, but much was tired on it.
As mixed-to-decent as your Toyota experience had been, there were many Pinto and Vega owners who only wish they could have been able to say such things about their car ownership experiences.
I had a shop teacher in high school in Virginia that bought one new…he was a bachelor right out of college, less than a decade older than I (though it didn’t seem so at the time).
My family was more into Datsun/Nissan though back then my Dad still owned his ’68 Renault R10 as his 2nd car, which this would have been equivalent to in my family. My two youngest sisters owned 4 Datsun/Nissan 200SX/240SXs between them (middle sister still has her ’97 she bought new) and I had a ’74 Datsun 710 back in the day; we’ve only had a single Toyota (Tercel) in our family.
He taught electronics, first an introductory class, and the 2nd year television repair (which was still a thing back then, I’ve repaired flat panels, never having had to actually buy one, repaired discarded ones mostly with bad power supplies). Our high school closed in the mid 70’s shortly after we moved once again in my Sr. year…for some reason almost none of the schools I went to is still a school except ironically the one I went to 1st grade at and the one I ended up graduating from but just attending last year there.
Not sure what became of his Celica, since we moved away…also remember another (chemistry) teacher having a Corvette, which he didn’t take very good care of…and an english teacher having a Saab Sonnett…but most of the cars in our school lot were domestics, a few Beetles besides, pretty typicial for the times. By the time I got out of school my “fun” car was a ’78 Scirocco…and I’ve stayed buying VWs ever since.