Lemon Yellow: 1974 Toyota Celica ST
We just featured another Toyota Celica ST survivor last week, but when life hands you a lemon, you don’t make lemonade…you plant the seeds and grow a lemon tree. Except that the Monsanto Company (which owns a staggering 23% of the world’s proprietary seed market) engineered that seed to be sterile and your lemon seed just sits in the ground doing nothing. The empty patch of dirt in your yard soon looks like a great place to store an old car, so you buy a Celica ST to leave in your yard. Do you sheeple see where GMO foods are leading us? Derelict cars in your backyard and nothing to eat but giant organically grown hybrid strawberry-squid-nut hybrid crops the size of a water buffalo…wait, actually…that sounds delicious. Here is a car for your dirt patch — find this 1974 Toyota Celica ST here on eBay
bidding for $8,099 reserve-not-met with 1 day to go, located in La Jolla, CA.
It is interesting that the seller of this Celica picked a hotel valet zone adjacent to the San Diego bay to take pictures of this beauty, especially considering the advertised La Jolla location. Regardless, it looks like a really nice pre-smog example of a smiley bumper equipped Celica with only 46k miles on the 5 digit odo.
Power comes from the original 18R-C inline-4, which should be good for something in the range of 97 horsepower. It is mated to a 4-speed manual gearbox and should provide a decent fun quotient on par with a BMW 2002, Datsun 510 or Saab 99 EMS.
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Pretty. There's some color mismatch on the panels, so check out the bodywork just to be sure, but if it's a baby-Mustang you want your choices are going to be limited by age and rust.
Even looks like he got rid of the big-ass rubber bumper guards that the '74 cars carried to meet bumper requirements.
The latest episode of Jay Leno's Garage features a 1971 Celica ST:
youtube.com/watch?v=KqzhfjbnXg0
I passed up on one about 3 years ago that was for sale for $3K in SoCal. It was rust free and I took it for a spin. Let me tell you, these cars aren't all that special to drive, very boring in fact. Nothing compared to the euro cars of the period or even a Datsun 510. I'd rather have a BMW 2002, Fiat or 240z from this period. They are like a Corolla with a different body shell. Buy it for looks, I guess.