Junkyard Find: 1983 Toyota Celica GT
During my last trip to California, I found this ’80 Celica coupe and this ’81 Celica liftback side-by-side at an Oakland self-service yard. A few rows away was another Celica. Apparently the old 22R-powered Celicas aren’t worth enough to keep on the street.
I’ve always thought the R engine was way too truck-ish for a sporty car like the Celica; all low-end torque and industrial clattering noises. You can’t argue with its reliability, though.
Toyota couldn’t match Mitsubishi for spaceship-style interiors, but this setup looked pretty futuristic.
Every time I see one of these things, I am reminded of this shot from my (1984) high school yearbook. Since most of my classmates drove beater Colts and Pintos— if they drove at all— the kid with the new Celica was feeling pretty sharp.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Hagerty and The Truth About Cars.
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I've had a few of these over the years. The last one was a bit of a "Hot rod" during a headgasket change i decided that if i could get the compression up a little it might be more fun. After talking with a local guy who raced 22re's I found that if you cut .030 off the head it'll bump the CP up to around 10-1. Talk about a screamer. Couple that with a lightened flywheel and stage 3 race clutch kit. Really woke the old thing up.
I bought one of these in the late 1990s for.... $80 Canadian. We gutted it, removed all the side and rear glass, welded in a roll cage and ran the car as an ice racer for 2 seasons leaving it at the track parking lot all winter. One time a u-joint in the propeller shaft broke, so we flipped the car onto it's side against a snowbank to make the repair more comfortable rather than crawling underneath.
After those two years, the car sat uncovered in a farm field for 2 years, fully exposed to the elements. We showed up one day with a charged battery and some fresh gas, put air in the tires, and the car started on the second attempt - 22RE FTW! The brakes were seized, so we dragged it down the road behind a pickup truck until they freed up, and surprisingly after that they worked fine. We drove the car in ~15 autocross events that summer, and we called it "The Ho' because 3 of us drove it, and let anyone else who wanted drive it too. The car was not competitive with any other car in the series, but there were enough of us driving it (usually 4-6 people in every event) that we made our own class and had fierce competition between us.
We never changed any fluids in the car the entire time I owned it - they all leaked slowly, and I just kept topping them up. This resulted in the most enduring nickname for the car, which was "The Slow-Leaka". The car never let us down, and was still a runner when it went to the wrecker.