Tales of the Wash

Toyota Celica ST Road Test

or return of Rent-a-Racer

The fever has had me for quite some time to return to the track. I have been making plans and the Corvette is not quite ready. The reason is long enough to fill a book, but that's a different story. So as the last autocross on my schedule approached, I was determined to make it. Now I realize in the rest of the world that autocrossing ends with the Nationals, but down here we still have three more months of good weather. And I was going to this one.

Luckily for me, the old Visa wasn't full or expired, and some of the rental car places are starting their snowbird specials. Why not a rent-a-racer? After all, what they endure from tourists is a lot more depressing than what I am going to do.

Originally, I was going for a Camaro/Firebird, but the Camaros were high ($58/day) and the Firebirds were dogs (sixes). So the next thing along was the Toyota Celica ST with the 16 valve 2000. One of the other guys here at work said he was real impressed by the speed and handling of his neighbor's so I figured it was worth a shot.

Well it was a relief to hear the rental guy tell me that this was one quick little car. Apparently, more than one person was impressed. So off I rode in the little creature, into the night and out on the town. After all, this is a rode test, isn't it?

Driving around town was nice, with all the creature comforts Toyota has thoughtfully provided. The air was cold and strong. It cooled the inside down to the "get me a jacket" level real fast. The Celica had 18,xxx miles on it so you could expect the harshness to be toned down a bit. The seats were firm but very comfortable, which the 50 mile rides to the autocross came to test. They were adjustable both fore and aft and in the seatback angle, down to almost laying flat. Scattered around the interior were various storage areas in the doors, console, seats, and dash. Definitely a consideration for using it as a rally car. I left the radar detector hidden in the one at the rear of the console while running so that I didn't have to worry about it running off when I was running.

The Celica had full instrumentation, gauges and tach, to keep you fully informed. This was the deciding point on it or the Firebird, as the six-cylinder Firebird didn't have a tach. How can you race without a tach?

The suspension was firm and responsive. The steering was darn quick. This is from a guy who has a Lotus and the Celica steered very fast with good response and feel. One-hand steering through sections of the autocross were easily accomplished when shifting. The automatic transmission was reminiscent of the old Powerglide days when left in Drive, but was tight and crisp when manually shifted through its three forward gears.

Unfortunately, the electric overdrive only worked on the third gear. Had I been home with the pit, I might have seen about overriding any first and second gear lockouts existing. The shift quadrant release button was on the left side, easily operated by the thumb, and the overdrive button was on the back of the shifter, also easily reached by one's thumb. On the dash, a O/D OFF light let you know how things were going.

In autocross mode Saturday, I filled the tires to 40 psi all around. Screaming through the esses at speed and breaking into the turns, the tail wanted to come around most of the time. The wide open 180 at the end, which you ran at about 50, made the front end plow severely, those little tires rolling under and sliding away. I couldn't coax enough power out of it to pull the front end around the turn at this speed. This was a major time waster I'm sure. Times ran about 2:05 - 2:06.

Sunday was a little different. I started with 47 psi in the tires. The plowing was still there but not as bad. The back end was feeling the same but the speed was increasing and the times were dropping. Times were 2:01 - 2:02 for the long course. It was suppose to be about 1.5 miles long.

I overrevved the engine three times during the weekend. When the engine went over 6 grand, power fell off. About 6200, it was as though the engine died, which probably means that a rev-limiter is involved. I was careful not to do this as this was a time waster. Left foot braking worked well although the brake pedal needs to be more left.

As I registered Saturday, the lady started asking the usual questions of class, make, model, etc., to which I could only shrug and answer "I dunno." After a bit, she looked real puzzled and I told her it wasn't mine. She laughed and asked "Hers?" "No, it's a rental" only brought a response that that wasn't a joke because a lot of people do that here. They didn't believe me until tech inspection when they noticed the floormats with the rent-a-car name.

As with all road tests, there needs to be a summary of good-bad, buy-ignore, love-hate. Well, the Celica is a neat little car, fast on the open road and quick around town. It was fun to drive and pretty economical, considering the pounding we were giving it. But it lost its class by a bunch. H-Stock has the BMW 318 and the Audi in there, too, so the mighty Celica had to run against someone who cared. Also, these guys were running for the end of year points. You can bet they had good tires and some loving preparation. They were running 1.54's. Whether you could shave those 6 seconds or not is unknown. After all, this is stock and there is only so much you can do and, at the same time, a lot you can do.

For just plain driving and fun, maybe even some rallying, I would give it a thumbs up. If you want to autocross it, well, rent one some weekend first and see what you can pull out of it. It was fun and maybe it just needs good tires and some performance tweaking. Or a good driver.

Save the Wave,

The Doctor

(originally written 11/87)