For this enthusiast, gettting the perfect Liftback was a strange and surprising journey
Why Toyotas? Oh, mate, it’s just something I’ve always been into. My first car was a Toyota; an RT46 Corona back when I was 18. And from that point on, I’ve just been in love with Toyotas. And since that Corona, I’ve always had a few. I reckon I’ve been through about 20 or 30; Supras, Corollas, T18s, you name it.
Right now, I have an RT46 Corona ute – that’s a rare one – a supercharged MR2 and a total granny-spec 1967 Corolla KE10. Actually, that’s the last of the fully imported Corollas. After that year they started assembling them down at Port Melbourne.
A bit more special from this angle
Anyway, then there’s this one. It’s a 1977 RA28, but it’s a bit special. It was actually my 50th birthday present. My wife asked me: What do you want for your birthday? I said: A 1977 Celica liftback. Straight up. No hesitation. But the challenge then became to actually find one.
I searched for over a year, with no luck. Then, all of a sudden, two of them came up for sale in the classifieds. The one I wanted was a one-owner car. I talked to the bloke selling it and asked him how much he wanted for it. He wasn’t sure, so we agreed that he’d have it valued by a specialist and we’d work it out from there.
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Problem was, when the valuer saw it, he made up all this crap about how it would never pass a roadworthy and convinced the owner, who was an elderly bloke, to sell it to him.
Man, I was livid. I almost had my hands on the thing and I got shafted. And then this one came up.
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To be honest, it was a pig of a car. But it was a start. At least I had a car to start with. When I bought it, it had five-stud wheels and a 2.8-litre Supra straight-six engine. Which wasn’t running of course. And it was rusty in the doors, the hatch and the bonnet. And a lot of the GT trim was missing. It was a mess. Rough as.
I slowly started stripping it down, but the bonnet, hatch and doors were toast. All gone. By the time I was right into it, I realised what a pig it was and wondered if maybe I hadn’t bitten off a bit too much. So I thought: Bugger it, I’ll sell it.
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The 18RG now has more poke than when it left the factory
I advertised it and a bloke contacted me and asked if I could take a photo of the build plate. He reckoned the photos I’d posted – even one showing part of the wiring loom – was suggesting that the car was a rarity. Once I’d sent the fella a pic of the build plate, that’s when the forums took off. It’s a clone; it’s this, it’s that.
But it turns out, that this is a real rare car. How rare? Rare enough to be a one of one, I reckon. The compliance plate says it’s an Oz-delivered car. But Oz-delivered with an 18RGU. That’s when I knew I wouldn’t be selling it, but also that I had to do the right thing by the car because it was such a special thing. I’m still not sure how an RA28 with a factory fuel-injected twin-cam engine came to wind up in Australia. Maybe it was brought out as an evaluation car. Maybe it was supposed to be a Bathurst race car that was never converted. Then again, they tended to race the coupe, not the liftback back then, so who really knows?
Anyway, it was back to Plan A and I restarted the resto. I did all the sourcing of the replacement bits, but the welding and panel beating was all done by pros.
These days, the engine runs a supercharger off a Soarer and I went back to my roots for the engine build. Way back when I was a kid in 1983, I had an 18RG engine built for the Celica I owned then, and I managed to track down the same engine builder to build me this one. The bloke running the business reckoned mine would be the last 18RG twin-cam he was going to build.
Everything was pulled apart and done properly and the pistons are oversized Arias. After a while, though, I got an itch for more power, and that’s where the supercharger came in. I thought about a turbo, but I already owned a supercharged MR2 and I knew what huge fun a supercharged engine could be. I know it’s cost me a bit of originality, but every time I drive it, I remember why I did it. At the same time, I got rid of the 45mm Webers which were hard to tune. That’s when it got the factory injection.
I knew the car needed an 18RG and not the Supra engine it came with, but the problem is that 18RGs are now getting really rare to find and hard to get bits for. Thank god for the internet, I reckon. So even though this whole project is a throw-back to my early days as a car nut, some things have changed, including the availability of engines. I can remember, back in the day, there were multiple companies in Melbourne importing used Japanese engines. You go down and buy a good running 18RG strapped to a pallet for about 600 bucks. In fact, if you were cashed up, you’d buy two of them and keep one for spares. Not any more.
The diff is an LSD and the brakes are a bit interesting, too. The rears are R32 Skyline and the fronts are HQ Holden. The wheels are 16-inch Watanabes RS8s that cost a stupid amount of money. Inside, I’ve replaced a lot of trim and had the seats retrimmed with the eyelets (which a lot of people have since copied) and stuff like the fake woodgrain trim is genuine GT stuff that the car would have had originally. I’ve also sourced things like the proper GT bonnet and the GT tail-lights.
I haven’t had it on a dyno yet, so I have no idea how much power it’s making. But it goes pretty damn well and puts a smile on my face. Overall, it’s been well worth the money I put into it, not to mention the three or four years it was off the road being built. In which time, it’s just become even more collectable. Toyotas haven’t scaled the heights of stuff like rotary Mazdas, but this one isn’t for sale, because it’s just too special.
Which brings us to the question everyone wants to ask: Is it a GT? An ST? An LT? The build-plate says it’s a GT, so that’ll do me. And an Australian-delivered GT, so that’s even better.
THE RESTO:
Rough as
Describes the Celica before the resto.
Four pots please
Shiny new metal ready for re-assembly.
A rare animal
Confirmed by its birth certificate.
Braveheart
18RG DOHC donk.Valve gear derived from 2000GT
A looming nightmare
An auto elecs heaven or hell?
A set of watanabes
Finish the Celica off nicely.
Original car: 1977 Toyota Celica RA28
Length of restoration: Six years
1977 TOYOTA CELICA RA28 (Unmodified Spec)
BODY: Two-door liftback
ENGINE: 18RG 1968cc four-cylinder DOHC
POWER & TORQUE: 107kW / 177Nm
PERFORMANCE: 0-100 km/10.1sec
TOP SPEED: 195 km/h (approx)
TRANSMISSION: 5-speed manual
DIFFERENTIAL: Limited Slip Diff
Reader Resto of the year contender
See all the contenders and vote here until Jan 8, 2023:
http://tradeuniquecars.com.au/rroty
From Unique Cars #467, Jun/Jul 2022
Photography: Guy Allen & Brett Jacques