Junkyard Find: 1981 Toyota Celica Liftback
We saw a fairly solid junked ’80 Celica coupe yesterday, and a good example of its liftback sibling was located in the same California self-service wrecking yard. It’s like a history lesson in Sporty Malaise Era Commuter Cars With Truck Engines!
In fact, these two Celicas are parked side-by-side as they await The Crusher’s jaws. Next stop: the Port of Oakland, where the ground-up remains of these cars will be put on container ships heading to China.
The ’81 was the last of the second-gen Celica s, and the big difference between the ’80 and the ’81 was the upgrade to the 2.4-liter 22R under the hood, a 200cc increase in displacement over the 20R.
These cars weren’t exactly high-performance machines, but they held together pretty well and they came with some nice— for the era— crypto-luxury touches. Check out the herringbone upholstery!
This period was the era of the split between California-emissions-legal cars and “49-state” cars; we’re looking at a car that probably spent its life in California.
The junkyard had this Celica in their “runners” section for a while, but nobody wanted it. Another rust-free pseudo-classic about to get crushed— it happens every day on the West Coast!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Looks like someone took a few parts from the engine bay. Stinks to see another Celica go, but a car that "runs and drives" can still have an assortment of fun things to deal with, like bad brakes.
You sure that's not a Celica Supra?