New Toyota Celica Hinted By Company Chairman

Something’s in the water at Toyota. At a time when most of its rivals have abandoned the more affordable end of the sports car market, the Japanese manufacturer developed a manual version of the GR Supra with great effort, while seemingly cooking up a new MR2 and quite possibly making plans to bring back the Celica.

At least, the last part is what chairman and former president and CEO Akio Toyoda seemed to be getting at in a recent interview with the company’s in-house 'Toyota Times' website during Rally Hokkaido. Asked “Is the Celica really coming back,” Toyoda, under his ‘Master Driver Morizo’ pseudonym, initially skirted around the question.

“You’ll have to ask Toyota Motor about that. I’m not on the executive side,” he said, before confirming he’d put in a “request,” as the interviewer put it. “But I don’t know what name it will come out under,” he added.

Later, he dropped another hint, referring to Toyota activities with retired WRC legend Juha Kankkunen. "I’m not just saying this because we’re at a rally event, but Kankkunen is 'Mr. Celica,'" Toyoda said, adding, "Now you can all have a think about why I’m using Kankkunen so much. See if you can guess!"

It’d be an interesting move when Toyota’s performance car portfolio, in the modern context at least, looks set to become quite busy. But then again, the company certainly hasn’t had any trouble shifting the current stuff - the GR Yaris has been taken off sale in the UK “due to unprecedented demand,” and Britain’s initial batch of GR86s was snapped up in a mere 90 minutes.

As for how a future Celica might shape up, we can only speculate. The possibly-MR2-previewing FT-Se concept is a battery-electric vehicle, and given current industry shifts, it wouldn’t be a surprise for an all-new Celica to go the same way. We’ll be watching this one with interest.