Fully Stock to Custom Sweetheart
GIRLS CAR COLLECTION, a girls-only event, was held on 23 November 2023 at Akihabara UDX underground parking, Tokyo. Among the approximately 30 cars owned by car-loving females, we would like to introduce a bright red Toyota 7th generation ‘Celica’, that a female owner in her 20s participated the event in.
The search for a car with the same birth year
Ms. “Akao” originally started looking for a car the same age as herself when she happened to meet a 2002 Toyota Celica SS-II. Two years younger than her, the car was 20 years old at the time and had 30,000 km on the odometer. While the body was in good condition, it had an automatic transmission and therefore a low selling price, which she recounts was one of the reasons she bought it. So why choose a Celica from all the other models around the year 2000?
“At first I admired the Soarer that was often used for drifting, and when I was looking into similar cars, I came to know about the Celica 200 series that was used for rallying and I started thinking that Celicas were cool. Then I happened to see the final model (230 series) on my commute to work, and I thought, ‘This is also called a Celica, isn’t it cool’, and that’s when I started searching for this car.”
100% Genuine Optional Parts
Ms. “Akao” ‘s Celica came to her in basically stock condition, but she wanted to add an aero system and started customizing it in her own way. The direction of the customization was to not take it too far, but to finish it to her liking while also using genuine parts. The parts she selected were VARIS side skirts, stock options front and rear bumpers, BLITZ dampers, a 5ZIGEN muffler, and MATRIX wheels (9J). In addition, the center panel has been painted red.
“I’ve lowered the car to the limit now, but the ride height looks even lower, so I wanted to add aero. A lot of Celica aero is very elaborate. I first added VARIS side skirts, but I wanted to make it look low and cool on the street by simply making use of the factory parts. I looked for some later and got it from people I met online or at events who I saw getting out of Celicas. It’s the last model, so there are rather a lot of parts lying around.”
“The center panel actually has a factory option in red. There was a car that came out at the same time as this one that had a red one, but it was a difference of about 600,000 yen. I talked to my father, who works in the car painting industry, and he said, ‘Buy this car and I’ll paint it for you’, so I had it painted. As for the interior, I had planned to do more work on it leading up to the Girls Car Collection, but I didn’t make it in time.”
Driving the manual shift mode is great fun
“Akao” has been working on her Celica to her liking. She seems to enjoy not only driving the Celica, but also customizing it.
“It’s so much fun to drive that I’ve started to go on very long trips. When I first drove it, I felt the steering wheel was heavy, but compared to my previous car, even at the same 60 km/h, the feeling was completely different. That made it really fun to drive. It’s an AT, but it’s button-shifted, making it all the more fun. I actually wanted to change the steering wheel at first, but I couldn’t because I would lose the button shift.”
translated by DeepL
