I’m sure a lot of people wonder why I chose a Celica of all cars for my all wheel drive build. Most never even knew that these specific cars existed! And that is one of the main reasons why I chose this car. With only 2,500 of these cars sold in the United States, they are not very common. The sticker price was $26,857 in 1990, so you can see why they weren’t very popular! The Celica shared its 3SGTE power plant with the Toyota MR2, so there is a strong aftermarket for the engine itself. The car however, takes some ingenuity to modify to the extreme. I thought that this would be a challenge to take on, and with my mechanical engineering background, I think I have what it takes to tackle it!

The 3SGTE is a 2.0 liter turbocharged motor that has a cast iron block with an aluminum cylinder head designed by Yamaha for Toyota (Toyota liked the design so much, they used it for the 4th generation Supra’s cylinder head). The transmission attached to these motors is very stout and can handle gobs of power and abuse. This is also another reason why I elected to go with the Celica, as compared to the fragile transmissions offered in other similar cars. The Celica Alltrac (Called the Celica GT-Four in Japan and the rest of the world) was designed specifically for the World Rally Championship, which is why everything is over built.