2000 Toyota Celica GT-S 6sp manual for $2400, worth it?

Jerry said:

 

Bored and looking at Facebook Marketplace for cars again, this popped up about 2hrs away.  She said $2600 but would take $2400 (I tried $2k, no dice.)

I looked up a review on Youtube and some links, apparently the 2ZZ engine and 6sp were fairly nice for the year 2000.  I'm thinking maybe I don't want a $500 E36 M3box and perhaps something in better shape is a better idea (for me, the mere mortal with civilian tools and basic know-how.)

I know anything can be a rallycross car, but would this be at least interesting?

Andy Thomas just won rallycross nationals with one (and has been a perrenial DC region winner with it for years). IDK what his has done to it but it's definitely a competitive rallycross car in any class.

EDIT: Someone already beat me to it.

In reply to Jerry :

I've got stock alloy 15's, 16's, or 17's I could throw in as a partial trade

Rust also scares me but I also don't live in the rust belt.

The only noteworthy  "unusual maintenance" to be on the look out for is you want to change out the lift bolts before they crack especially on these earlier models. If they break lift or vtec won't engage.

Headroom with a helmet on isn't great. I'm not tall and have to open the sun-shade to fit with a helmet with stock seats

The lack of limited slip and cheap tuning options makes the 8th civic si more attractive if you plan on going that far with the car, but even as is, the celica very compentent car and nothing touches in in the price range except maybe a neglected 3-series.
 

The celica is a great car to enjoy especially if you don't have lofty goals or plan on spending a lot of money to modify it. It's a blend of being "disposable" but still an attractive car to be proud of and responds well to mild/cheap modifications. It's fast for the era intake & axleback  can get you to mid/low 14s trapping 95-100 depending on prep/driver.

20 dollar motor mount inserts and 5 dollar toyota camber bolts makes the car feel very sharp

Lots of good data on bolts ons thats easy to browse in the old archives (1/4 mile runs and dyno runs)
https://web.archive.org/web/20120126151720/http://www.newcelica.org/forums/tracktimedb/tracktimedb.php
https://web.archive.org/web/20120119181329/http://newcelica.org/forums/dynodb/dynodb.php

Timestamped clip of me "drag racing" an earlier mustang GT out of Turn 5 at NJMP Lightning

Pretty good deal even with the rust, these are good cars all-around, performance is similar to an Acura RSX and they had a decent bit of mod potential. The biggest weak spot on this model is the shifter, especially in how easy it is to money-shift the engine to destruction, so watch out for that.

I had a similar year Celica GTS with a little less miles and a little less rust that I only got $1800 for. These were pre pandemic times though. Mine did snap it's lift bolts, actually they were broken when I bought it. There's a revised part # that isn't supposed to be as wear prone. I was able to extract with an ez out and not too much gnashing of teeth. That year is cable throttle with the higher redline. Still a fairly narrowband, lift at 6200, redline at 8000ish. Mine actually had enough rust in the rear crossmember that one of the ears for the upper camber arm had torn away, giving it way too much camber on one side. I still have adjustable camber arms in the box if you pick one up. I had Raceland coilovers (I know, I know), Work wheels, motor mount inserts, intake, ebay exhuast and a couple other small things. Great fun daily. Hatch is quite usable, especially with the rear seats down. 

dculberson said:

Good deal. The 2zz / 6 speed combo is always desirable for mr2 spyder swaps. 

The MR-S is an absolutely delightful car in stock trim, I can't imagine how awesome they are with this powertrain.

Before i found our Elantra for Champ Car, these were on the higher end of the list due to the amount of power it had versus just about everything else in Class B. 

I do still wonder how it would do against the Prelude that absolutely demolished the field at the VIR 8+7 in December. Thing was something in the range of 10 seconds faster a lap than us. 

Don't forget.  A Celica won Stock Block this year and placed 8th overall at the Challenge.  I was impressed.

Thanks for all the advice.  I'm really going to try to not go too crazy this time, and just enjoy the car (with any needed maintenance items).  I could see an axle back and CAI maybe, but going to try not to do my usual invest $$$ then get bored and sell at a loss.

But my original idea of a $500-1K crapfest makes think I'd get bored real quick.  My philosophy has always been if you can't be fast, at least look good.

I remember someone on here once said these cars are the best handling FWD car ever made. Whatever that's worth.
 

I've never driven one, but all the mags at the time put it ahead of all the competitors of the era.

The rust scares me but other than that, seems like a good buy.

You can buy an oil pan for the 1zz engine with a baffle in it. Toyota was worried about oil drain back in the 2zz engine so no baffle in the oil pan. I have a 2001 GTS. Trans patterns were really close and people were getting the wrong gear on downshift. Toyota did 2 things to later cars, lowered redline and wider shift pattern. Mine has the close pattern and 8300 redline. Love the handling of mine. Previous owner replaced struts and springs. There are resources for the car. Monkeywrenchracing.com  has alot of stuff for them. I have new lowering struts and springs and thicker sway bars. Haven't put them on. New celica.org and Celica hobby are online resources. Strut bars on the front, top and bottom make a difference. Have one on the back on the bottom. I don't race mine. 

In reply to Jerry :

If you end up in Columbus and have time for a beer let me know.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

Captdownshift (Forum Supporter) said:

On dirt there shouldn't be enough grip to cause enough lateral Gs to cause oil starvation issues. Rallycross is a properly suited purpose. 

There is a local who gave up on rallycrossing an older Civic when he was going through approximately one D16 per session due to oil starvation.  Usually it would have a bad knock by lunchtime and it would go home on the trailer.

He traded up to an R53 which turns out to be mind bogglingly fast (a front drive car should NOT be able to rotate and/or accelerate like that!) but problematic in new and interesting ways.

I've measured consistent .8g cornering with spikes to 2.0-2.6g.

 

Speaking of rallycrossers, I think Mike Golden's AW11 had a 2ZZ in it, and I know Draco was looking into a 2ZZ for his MR-S.

The fact that whenever I saw that car running it was bouncing off the redline also may have lead to some issues...

In reply to AxeHealey :

So many racers take a Honda and then bounce it off the rev limiter and are surprised when they have issues. Sonic's Lemons racer Honda had a shift light set at a reasonable RPM and we kept it off the redline and it lasted and lasted and lasted.

In reply to AxeHealey :

And?  It's front wheel drive, they do that, when they aren't breaking CV joints.

It was certainly the fast way around with my Golf vs. shifting.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Spikes aren't a concern, as it's not actual static load that will cause starvation and .8 is not enough to warrant concern. 

lnlds said:

The lack of limited slip and cheap tuning options makes the 8th civic si more attractive if you plan on going that far with the car, but even as is, the celica very compentent car and nothing touches in in the price range except maybe a neglected 3-series.

From a rallycross standpoint you can get a B15 SE-R with a torsen for this price fairly easily and it should be just as effective, if not more so.

Not sure if you bought this or not, but if you did - I'm curious if it was black (I don't see any pictures). I know my old '00 Celica GT-S was for sale for around the same price. I had traded it in down in Cincinnati last summer. It had a little under 217k at that point. And...it had some rust (the only reason I traded it in).

Wish I'd held onto it for parts, as I wound up getting an '02 Celica GT-S just 5 months later.

If you did buy it, post up pictures...if it was mine I can give you information on its history from '08-21 (89k-216k).

Good luck either way. Great cars IMO!

In reply to squall :

It was red, and I did not.  I tried contacting that Thursday to set up a weekend view and no replies to a few attempts.  Oh well, the rallycross schedule ended up being only at a place 4-5hrs away anyway.