Toyota Celica GT4 Review

Overall Rating

Very reliable. Fantastic handling, the best handling car on the road, especially for the money. Very fast. Can be used as an everyday car. Reasonable insurance. Good build quality.

Fuel consumption. Getting it serviced properly (even Toyota dealerships struggle, well the Cheltenham one does anyway). Genuine parts are expensive in comparison to normal cars, but is this a normal car? No!

My friend bought the Toyota Celica GT4 practically new and screamed around in it for a while, then I purchased it from him. I have been driving it for around 10 years, and the car has done 135,000 miles. Around 80,000 I have covered. I have owned 2 Toyota MR2's prior to this car, and I believe this one has been more reliable.

It has always been Dealership serviced in Cheltenham, and the only expensive things I remember are the clutch at 61000 miles, and discs all round at about 80/90000 miles. I did race it to the South of France at over 120mph most of the way there and back one year, and the service was lots of little bits for £800.00, but what fun. I only managed to get to about 145mph tops though, but I held it there for about 20 minutes... amazing!

Even at this high mileage the car hasn't changed in performance. I regularly bomb around the motorways at 120+. It will still out perform a Porsche on the country lanes. I have noticed from around 120000 miles that the suspension is getting a bit soft, so even though you can still go around corners sideways in full control (rally style), it does fidget more under heavy braking into corners. The lovely thing with this car is that if you make a high speed corner mistake, just let off and it will forgive you.

The brakes are awesome by the way!

The only bad points I have encountered are silly little things, that if rectified could be expensive. The electronic antenna broke, and I was told you can only fit a Toyota replacement or go to a scrap yard? New price £250. The oil warning light is faulty at £350. The suspension over the years has always been clunky, and often a bush is said to be going. They never know which one, but always charge around £250 to have a go at replacing one.

If you want to cart stuff around it is OK, but the stabiliser bar goes across the back in the middle of the boot space, which definitely restricts what you can fit in. If you want to move stuff get a van!

One thing I am surprised at, is this car has never asked for a new exhaust, I am still on the original. My MR2's were always having new ones.

Pirelli tyres last well, probably around 30000.

The turbo coolant light always used to come on in the damp weather, yet if you put a tea-spoon amount to fill it back up, it would cure it!

In the last two years nothing has gone wrong apart from the good old bush problem, and an oil leak actually caused by Toyota servicing. That's in about 30000 miles!! The clutch is getting close to replacement after 75000 more miles. Toyota are quoting £700-£1000 with £240 being for the parts.

I rarely ramp the car to the red line... no need, but I don't drive it slow, therefore fuel is the expense. If you drive it hard on the turbo all the time it devours fuel. Normally I get 300 miles (ish) on a £50 (ish) tank of fuel. Drive it hard and this can go down to around 250 miles.

All in all it is a fantastic reliable vehicle. My next car would have to be a Porsche, 50k Mercedes, or a Ferrari to upgrade from this.