6G Celicas Forums

An AtariAge forum member got a bug up his tuckus and decided to turn his 1995 Toyota Celica into a replica of the Celica ST205 GT-Four from the classic video game Sega Rally Championship. Here's how he did it.

Confess: Every time you drive a car in a video game, you want it just a little. Age, make, model, condition — when you're spanking something across a digital landscape, none of these things matter. And if you owned an ST205-chassis Celica and happened to be a game freak, you'd probably think about doing something like this.

A little background, in case you were born too early, too late, or simply don't remember: In the early and mid-1990s, Japanese video-game firm Sega was on top of the world. Its consoles offered some of the most evolved graphics and gameplay in the industry, and its racing titles (remember, this is the company that gave the world the rear-view racing game in the form of 1982's Turbo), including Virtua Racing and Daytona USA, were the best on the market.

Sega Rally Championship, which debuted in arcade form in 1995, helped cement Sega's technical dominance. It was the first game to provide relatively realistic car modeling and to offer a wide variety of driving surfaces; oversteer, countersteer, and audio pace notes were all part of the package, and car behavior changed depending on which surface you drove on. The game's heart, however, lay in its cars.

Two cars were on offer: the Celica GT-Four and the Lancia Delta HF Integrale. Both were World Rally Championship stars, but when the game debuted, the Integrale was past its prime and the Celica was actively competing. It was essentially the first Japanese rally car to approach household-name status in the United States, and its cachet didn't hurt the game: Sega Rally proved to be one of its parent company's longest-lived brands, eventually being ported onto PC and the Sega Saturn (remember that?). It still exists today in the form of the Playstation/Xbox title Sega Rally Revo, and its influence can be felt in every driving game from Mario Kart to Forza Motorsport.

Given all that, it's easy to understand why the AtariAge guy did what he did. His car started life as an ordinary '95 Celica GT; $300 in decals and a bunch of aftermarket parts later, it is now something else entirely. And while you may look at this and wonder what the big deal is — with the exception of the cosmetics, the car is largely stock — we applaud it anyway. The cool thing here, after all, is that this was found on a video-game forum. The guy built this car not out of love for rally or love for Toyota — he built it because he loves a game. Car spawns sim spawns enthusiast spawns car: Amen.

The Celica, in particular the Castrol rally car, was my dream car when I was young. The Prius is being passed on to my wife, and I finally purchased a "new" GT. While it won't be a perfect replication, it'll make me happy, and that's all that matters, right? The goal of my goal is to make sure the car DOESN'T become a ricer and stays classy as close to the GT-Four original as I can with my abilities (and my wallet )

The car, including the hood, will all be repainted white as the car is heavily oxidized. Many parts including the air intake hose, radiator, exhaust, ect were replaced. Lots of dry rot, but the car is rust free (except where she was hit a long time ago behind the tail light, which we'll fix). It's been shipped from Texas, so lots of sun damage, no rust. Tomorrow begins the last bit of the repair work (bondo door dings and fix rust) before we get it painted. All that, and then the removal of the ugly country blue pinstripes convinced me to dive head first into this project.

Thanks for the compliments guys. The car has been sold for a couple weeks now, but I really enjoyed making it and driving around in it. Yes indeed, I'm from the Dublin, Ohio area. The car is now in NY, so if you see it, it was mine, haha. Regarding the engine swap, I hope you guys realize that I am a part of a huge Celica group and know very well how "easy" it is to swap a red top Beems (or several other engines) in this car . However, the car was what it was. It made me happy to drive in it, and saved me gas going to and from work. I'm a computer artist and I never intended this to be a track car or race car, just a large scale "project", and a homage to a game on my favorite console of all time. An engine swap is an engine swap, and countless of my Celica friends on 6gc.net have done them. But the amount of work that went into restoring the car and creating it's look held more value to me than more horsepower . I've gotten a lot of people wave and smile at me on the road and it was great spreading the joy and getting other people to remember a great car, game and system. Thanks for all the compliments and thanks for the story!