I can't say I actually feel Car Lust towards this scabby 1986 Toyota Celica GT--it's probably more like Car Love. Or, at the very least, Car Affection. It's the sort of feeling reserved not for your first love, or your first crush--those are more intense emotions--but the gentle fondness that you feel for your first girlfriend or boyfriend.
You see, this Celica was my first car. Not the first car I drove regularly, but the first car to be owned and driven exclusively by me. Because of that, and the fact that it was such a trustworthy companion, it holds a special place in my heart and first nurtured in me the love of nondescript older cars. The Celica was also my first hands-on experience with the beauty and majesty of a hatchback.
I bought the Celica from a co-worker for the princely sum of $900, expecting basic transportation and nothing more. You see, I had never really given Celicas much thought before. Within the great pool of 1980s and 1990s Japanese sports coupes, a group that included the Mazda MX-6, Mitsubishi Starion, Ford Probe, Isuzu Impulse, Mitsubishi Eclipse, Subaru XT, and Honda Prelude, the various breeds of Celica were rather unremarkable. They weren't the prettiest, ugliest, slowest, fastest, most agile, or most ham-handed. They weren't great, and they weren't abjectly awful. With the possible exception of the All-Trac Turbo, Celicas were the closest thing to a generic, house-brand sports coupe.
However, age has a way of adding character, and I found my Celica to be pretty endearing. Its scabby paint job, tacky 1977-era brown striped upholstery, and dark brown plastic trim were ugly enough to give it some shaggy-dog appeal. It had some minor damage to the right-front fender, and the passenger's-side hidden headlight was recalcitrant and needed a solid whack with your fist to open. The car's previous owner had a fondness for (ugh!) bumper stickers. I scraped off the "I (heart) Beads!" sticker, but wasn't able to get a purchase on the "Question Reality" sticker.
Despite knackered shocks, the Celica was still the most fun beater I've ever driven--it had solid, responsive steering, and enough agility to make twisty roads fun. Still, the GT designation was a bit of a misnomer. The GT had the same 120-horsepower engine as the base model, and didn't have the grunt of the upmarket GT-S. By the standards of a $900 car, though, the Celica felt pretty fast, and could turn the 0-60 sprint in roughly 9 seconds (timed, naturally, by my own stopwatch). It also got great mileage; combined with the $0.75/gallon price of gas in North Carolina in 1998, driving the Celica was virtually free.
Unfortunately, after six blissful months with the Celica, we were torn asunder. A 16-year-old girl, who had only had her license for two weeks and was driving her father's 1985 Toyota Supra without permission, was turning left at an intersection, thought she had a green arrow, and didn't notice me driving through the intersection. She pulled out, and her Supra's front corner scraped down the driver's side of my Celica. After this little bit of inter-Toyota warfare, her Supra was left with a chipped bumper. At first glance, the Celica looked nearly as unharmed, but upon closer inspection it was clear that her bumper had caught my front wheel. Since my two front wheels were left pointing in different directions, something fundamental was obviously broken. It's not hard to total a car that isn't worth much, and that did the trick.
Financially, the deal actually worked out quite well. After initially paying $900 for the car, the girl's insurance reimbursed me $1,500 when they totaled out my car. Still, a $600 profit is poor reward for the loss of a good automotive friend. There's something very painful about seeing your first car in a junkyard, awaiting its fate, and thinking about it now leaves me surprisingly emotional.
--Chris H.
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