My first memories, like the ones of everyone in this earth, are a fuzzy, uncoordinated ocean of amorphous circumstances and people that are intersected on occasion by moments of supreme clarity that I can remember perfectly as if they had happened a few hours ago. (Un?)surprisingly enough, most of them have to do with cars.
I couldn’t quite say Maserati before I could say Mommy, but apparently I came wired from the factory to like cars, even before I know what a car actually was. I don’t remember when my mother decided to do a giant pyramid of Gerber glass bottles for me to pose in front of, but I do remember the not-at-all-momentous time when I walked behind my dad’s Nissan truck and noticed it had a black strip across the tailgate.
When I was five or thereabouts they bought me a Safari green pedal-powered Jeep that I drove everywhere provided it wasn’t uphill. My doctor couldn’t get within a couple of feet of me to do anything unless he brought a sacrificial offering of a toy car (Or a lollipop). You get the point. But my actual first memory, at least the one that I have always accepted as the first, on account that I was still on a booster seat when it happened, goes as follows:
I’m in the back seat of a car on a rainy night. It’s very dark. I look to the front and a bit to the left of me and there’s my mother, completely focused on driving. The radio has some people talking on it. It’s a low car and there are no doors in the back. There is a green thing glowing on the dashboard.
And that’s it. I realize that at that age I probably didn’t know any of those words, certainly not in English, but it’s the best way to describe what I see when I close my eyes and transport myself back to that time. I suppose I would have a lot more detail on the image if my brain had known any words with which to do association with. But I guess it’s too much to ask of a two(or so) year old. At first I didn’t even know if it was a memory or a dream that I remembered, but as I got older and the old memory bank was doing sorting a slightly newer memory surfaced. It was once again a memory of me waking behind a red car. I’m told that whenever I saw one I walked around it as it wanting to take all of it in. In this one I noticed there was something written in the back of it.Being the precocious little scamp that I was I had to try and say it.
“CE-LI-CA”
I’m not sure that the market had the same warm reception to the Celica that I had. When it was launched in 1990 the coupe market was still there, but it was beginning to show signs of shrinking. The people were beginning to add more doors and more ride height to their preferences. Nonetheless, it may be the memory playing me, but I find this to be the prettiest Celica they built. The ‘Super Round’ (their words not mine) styling Took over from the angular shapes and creases of the ‘80s and smoothed out into what ‘90s car design was going to be all about. Front-wheel drive and a measly 103HP from the base engine meant that purists would probably scoff at it, I think it was adequate for the intended purpose of looking good and making its driver look good as well.
They were certainly at lot better at that than their successor, which looks as though Toyota decided to ditch pop-ups at the last minute and realized they’d still have to put the headlights somewhere.
And anyway, if you wanted a real sports coupe instead of a city cruiser Toyota would gladly sell you a Widebody All-trac with a turbocharged engine capable of 221 Horsepower. Some models had four-wheel steering, but those were only sold in Japan. The ST185 (GT-Four) model was built as a homolgation special so that the Celica could go rallying.
It was very successful, winning four of the rallies that they entered it in 1992 and the 1993 and 1994 World Rally Championships altogether. Its successor, the ST205 is perhaps more remembered for what has to be one of the best cheats on racing history. When the FIA instructed rally teams to fit restrictor plates on the turbos of all Group A rally cars, Toyota mounted theirs on springs that would make it move back under load and allow up to 25% more air to pass through the turbo. Everything was built in a gap so small that it didn’t look like it could be opened. So when it wasn’t under load everything looked perfectly compliant. Max Mosley himself said that the cheat was “the most sophisticated and ingenious device either I or the FIA’s technical experts have seen for a long-time.” And it got Toyota banned from rallying for the rest of 1995 and 1996.
The one my mother drove didn’t share much apart from a passing resemblance to those rally monsters. No, as far as I can work out it was a completely standard front-wheel drive model. It could’ve maybe been an GT, which ditched the 1.6-liter for a 130 HP 2.2 mill. She sure didn’t know; it wasn’t even hers. Though shocking to me, it did solve the problem of me remembering it being stored in a garage despite the fact we didn’t have one. It was loaned to her by a friend while the Fiat was suffering from old-age problems and her Chevette had just decided it was a lot more fun to blow water out of its radiator rather than use it to cool the engine. I don’t know how long she had it or whatever came out of the friends that loaned it to her. What I do know is that, involuntarily, they kickstarted my passion in cars as well as my memory.
This is one of my favorite reads during Toyota Week at CC. Like you, Gerardo, some of what I believe to be my earliest memories involve the family Plymouths and my grandparents ’74 Caprice and ’78 LTD.
I’ll see this generation of Celica (not my favorite) in a different, more positive light after reading this.
Well written piece – thanks for sharing it.
My first memories are all green. Green house, iguanas, and the big emerald green thunderbird my mom had when I was a little kid.
I remember her driving fast and hitting a bump and the car bouncing a few times. She did it on purpose from what she told me.
Apparently that was the only road on base you could open up a car on. The jump was expected by most people
Ditto. Even before my memories, a story told by parents… when I was about 18 months old I could barely talk, but I could reliably distinguish car brands. (This would have been 1951.) Once we were visiting an uncle who didn’t believe my abilities. He drove up to an A&W root beer stand, noticed a bumper peeking out from behind the building. He couldn’t identify it, so he challenged me. “Root beer if you can tell me what car that is.” “Chrysler.” Uncle Bill walked around the building and read the nameplate. Chrysler. Got my root beer.
I remember the car and the bounces. I didn’t know why it bounces until later when she told me why. I do remember saying faster mommy with my Sister in the back seat. Mom said it was the only road on Gitmo to open up the cars to burn out the carbon. She said she knew it was bad for the suspension on our t-bird. But that it was fun. She replaced our bird with an F-150 when we came back.
She still misses the T-bird
First memories are standing on the front seat of Mom’s ’53 Chevy. Every stop had her arm automatically reaching up to restrain me. For the rest of her life a quick stop would still cause her arm to reach across anyone in the passenger seat.
I really wanted to get inside the radio so I could eat that little round candy on top of the radio pointer.
The windshield wipers were scary (to 2-3 year old me) when they were turned on.
Yes memories of racing my sister to get in the 54 Vauxhall with mum first and being allowed to pull the starter button to fire the engine up, used to do the same in grans 55 Minor but I was also allowed to shift the gears in that, I was most disappointed in our new 64 Velox in that it started with the key and it wasnt in front of the passenger, I mean what were they thinking?
I seen to remember Carlos Sainz trowing his helmet thru a window when the darned thing stalled moments before he would have been world champion. Not looking it up now but whether it did or did not happen as I recall it’s a lasting memory.
It did happen but it was the WRC Corolla in ’98 and also it was Moya, the co-driver, not Sainz who put the helmet through the rear window. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone so disappointed in a Toyota, ever.
It caught fire half a kilometer from the end, he was easily going to win the whole championship.
Close but no cigar then eh. A Corolla it was. Still very bad advertising. Thanks for linking the vid.
Since this seem to be Toyota week, I`m very surprised that I didn`t see the one that started it all. Of course that would be the Toyoda Model AA. from 1936 a design very much inspired by the Chrysler Airflow .And yes, it was spelled Toyoda back then.
My older sisters say I was too young to be able to remember it, but I seem to remember my folks 52 or 53 Dodge. It was 2 tone blue with a grey and blue cloth interior. I definitely remember the car that replaced it, a 55 Ford Country Sedan. That was a red car with cream around the windows and a red vinyl interior. In both cars I ALWAYS rode in the back seat….or so it seemed. The 1st car I remember riding in the front seat ofwas my aunt and uncle’s bottle green 55 Ford Ranch wagon. What I remember most about that car was that every time we hit a moderately sized bump the speedometer needle jumped wildly. That, in a car just 2 or 3 years old.
As far as Celicas go, my only driving experience is in an 80 ST coupe with automatic. It was my sister’s and very much the kind of car a young woman would find attractive.
My favorite Celicas, for some reason, are the even generation Celicas. I’ve always thought the Celicas pictured were a touch too feminine looking
My favorite Celicas, for some reason, are the even generation Celicas. I’ve always thought the Celicas pictured were a touch too feminine looking
I always felt the same about this generation, and appropriately enough they were very much chick cars from my memory, I remember a few moms drove them when I was in elementary school (just before before booster seats were mandated til the kids are 18). First gen Miatas suffer from that problem as well, though certainly make up for it. Now ironically I find these preferable to their immediate styling successors(though I always did and still do find the 7th gen Celica hideous)
I normally don’t like cars for their nostalgic properties, as I was born way later than most cars I admire and lust for, so I simply just like the cars. But these Celicas may be the exception, because they’ve definitely grown on me over the years and do miss when the streets were littered with them the same way CUVs are today, which ironically are all a bit too feminine as well to be convincing as “rugged” in the same way the Celica was “sporty”. Though these did make pretty awesome rally cars, and my exposure to that form of motorsport was zilch as a kid, so being a bit more aware of that probably softened my view as well, even more so now being an admirer of elaborate cheaters lol
Maybe it’s wired into the mind of future “car guys” (and girls) to have an inexplicably early car memory. Mine would be a memory of the back seat of the ’74 Dart my Dad drove, and of getting out of the car, walking around the back of it, and toward a store. The Dart was gone well before I was three years old, so that has to be one of my earliest memories. But it doesn’t correspond with any old photo we have, so it seems legit.
I always liked this generation of Celica, even if they did get a bit of a “chick car” rep. One of the guys in my high school class drove one, and he didn’t seem to get any flak for it, so maybe that figures into my opinion. Still think that they’re the best-looking ones other than perhaps the original generation.