Road Tests: Long-Term Test

Video highlights of this vehicle

After two months in minivan purgatory, Executive Editor Karl Brauer hopped in our long-term Celica GT-S and thought he'd found performance-car nirvana. Like so many things in life, your driving impressions of a car can be heavily influenced by what you've driven immediately before (or what you drive immediately after) taking the wheel. In this case, a month in a 1999 Honda Odyssey, followed by a month in a 2001 Dodge Grand Caravan (with occasional forays in his personal vehicle...a 2000 Honda Odyssey!) left Karl pining for anything with a manual shifter and fewer than five doors. The lightweight, sharp-nosed Toyota, with ultra-responsive steering and braking characteristics, answered his prayers after only a few minutes.

Over the course of the month, Mr. Brauer came to realize that the Toyota was not the end-all, be-all of performance coupes, but it was, thankfully, much more entertaining than any box-on-wheels.

The Toyota's strength lies in its aforementioned quick steering and confident braking. Karl thinks the car looks as good as any modern coupe, with the edgy bodylines accurately reflecting the car's focused nature. Upon close inspection, Mr. Brauer noticed more orange peel in the paint than he would have expected from a near-new Toyota, but only a few minor scratches mar the otherwise attractive dark blue shell that still shines with a powerful luster. The same can be said of the 16-inch five-spoke alloy wheels that still look brand-new.

As much as Karl enjoyed driving the Celica, he did come away with a host of complaints, many of them stemming from his West Los Angeles commute, which is clearly not what the Celica's engineers had in mind when designing the car. Mr. Brauer explains:

"The transmission is frustrating because it could have been a great tranny. All the key elements are here: six speeds, close ratios, short throws. Even the oft-maligned shift pattern, that many feel is too tight and difficult to figure out, is workable for me. So what is the problem? A sludgy, molasses-like feel when rowing between gears. As short and tight as the gear throws are, you still can't easily perform fast shifts because there is simply too much resistance when rowing between gears. And even when you aren't trying to shift quickly, the resistance wears you down (especially in stop and go traffic) because it takes too much muscle to shift. This makes the Celica a real bear in city commuting, the primary conditions I used it for. Compounding this issue was a peculiar ankle ache that I often got when driving the Celica in heavy traffic. It was on the outside of my left ankle, and because the clutch pedal resistance is not terribly high, I think the problem had something to do with the angle at which my foot was contacting the pedal. It almost felt like my foot was sliding off the left side of the pedal, and I had to use extra pressure to keep that from happening. Is this a problem with pedal placement? I don't really know, but adjusting my seat position and body placement did little to solve the problem."

Compounding Karl's ankle pain was the need to have the clutch pedal firmly pressed up against the carpet to get the car to start (as mentioned in previous updates). Mr. Brauer observed, "If the pedal is slightly off the floor, the engine will turn over but not fire. This can be annoying until you figure out what the problem is. It's also annoying because the floor isn't completely flat and to get the pedal snugged up against it you have to position your foot just right or you literally can't push the pedal to the floor. I think this situation may have contributed to my ankle pain because when my foot was where it had to be to push the pedal to the floor, it was not hitting the pedal squarely, but at a slight angle."

Karl also noticed that the Celica had considerably more low-end torque when it was first started, likely because the engine was running rich during warm-up. This gave Karl a sense of how powerful the car could be at low rpm if the fuel mixture was richened slightly, though the Greenies certainly wouldn't approve of this richer mixture because it would potentially mean more unburned fuel leaving the tailpipe. That's unfortunate, because a lack of low-end torque is one of the Celica's major problems. During a short stint in San Francisco, the car proved tricky to launch from a standstill when ascending the city's steep hills. Though Mr. Brauer claims to have never stalled it, he experienced several instances where the engine lugged while being precariously balanced between stalling and starting to roll. The "on-off switch" nature of both the clutch and gas pedals only added to the challenge.

The trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco showed the Celica to be an adequate highway car in terms of cabin noise, though it will never be mistaken for a Camry. Both the driver's and passenger's windows had small air leaks at the back edge, and the engine/exhaust drone was clearly audible at freeway speeds, even with the transmission in sixth gear. The Celica, which has been recording some of the best mileage of our long-term fleet, did manage over 400 miles on a tank of gas under highway driving conditions. Unfortunately, Mr. Brauer was fairly certain it threw a wheel weight on the way up, as a sharp "clunk" in the passenger-side rear wheel area came in the middle of central California with no debris in the road. After the noise, Karl thought he detected a small vibration coming from the back of the car that wasn't there previously, but it might have been there all along, and he just wasn't sensitive to it. Happily, in terms of seating, the car is quite comfortable on long-haul drives.

The item of note relates to the Celica's troublesome sunroof shade. When Karl last drove the car — close to a year ago with 3,500 miles on the odometer — the sunroof shade was the only area with obvious wear. There was a slight rattle coming from it, and the leading edge of the second half of the cover (it is a two-piece design with the first half covering the second half as it slides back) was starting to show wear from rubbing on the first half. Not surprisingly, things have gotten worse in this area. Now the rattle is constant, though still not horrid. More troubling, however, is the way the cover slowly retracts by itself when driving the Celica. Even without regular hard launches, the cover slowly, over time, slides back. Worse still, once it starts to open, the cover has less support and, as one might expect, rattles even louder. Mr. Brauer is afraid that before the lease is up, the cover will be sliding fully open with each throttle application and slamming shut whenever the brakes are applied. The last time we visited the dealer for this problem, he claimed the weather-stripping simply needed lubricant. Wonder what they'll say this time. Karl notes that he doesn't particularly like sunroofs and never opened the glass section once during his month of driving the car. Obviously, this is an option he could easily do without.

Handing the keys off after a month behind the wheel left Mr. Brauer with mixed emotions. "I wish the Celica had more low-end torque, higher-grade interior materials and a friendlier shifter. On the plus side, I like the looks, the handling, the interior layout and the car's overall image. It felt sooo good to get into this car after two months of minivans (long-term Odyssey and Grand Caravan). Would I go buy a Celica? No, but I'd happily drive one, especially if the majority of my driving was done in rural canyons, not congested cities."

Current Odometer: 18,350
Best Fuel Economy: 29.7 mpg
Worst Fuel Economy: 19.9 mpg
Average Fuel Economy (over the life of the vehicle): 26.6 mpg
Body Repair Costs: None
Maintenance Costs: None
Problems: Sunroof shade wearing out.