It remains to be seen though as to when exactly this upcoming Celica will eventually be landing…
After what has been years of hints and teases, Toyota has finally confirmed that the Celica nameplate is making a comeback!
Funnily enough too after all those years of careful hinting and teasing, this confirmation that Toyota is reviving the Celica came as a rather impromptu reveal. When pressed by Japanese automotive publication Best Car asked Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda at the event if the long-rumoured sports car is making a comeback, he refused to answer but redirected the question to the firm’s Executive Vice President Yuki Nakajima, who then reportedly said outright: “We will make the Celica.”
Now without wanting to pop anyone’s bubble here, it is worth highlighting that Nakajima did go on to qualify his statement by adding that ‘there is no sign of it right now’, despite ‘many people within the company who are eagerly awaiting the Celica’. So it will likely be a while then this upcoming 8th iteration of this iconic coupe nameplate might be a while yet before it eventually is to find its way onto the showroom floor of a Toyota dealership.
To those who are willing to indulge in some unconfirmed rumours though, the current word on the street in Japan is that at least a concept for this 8th-generation Celica could make an appearance as early as 2025. What more too is that given the fact that Toyota has been working hard on developing its new line of internal combustion engines, petrolheads all around should be confident that this sports car will all but likely be a fuel-burner when it eventually debuts.
The Celica was previously a consistent presence in Toyota’s lineup from 1970 to 2006, spanning seven generations. The last in the line thus far was the T230 iteration, which was a peppy front-wheel drive sports coupe with a fizzy 1.8-litre four-pot that could incidentally be yours over here in Malaysia right now for around the RM 40,000 mark.
Rumours that Toyota was intending to revive the Celica has been floating around for years, but it really begun to pick up steam when chairman Akio Toyoda previously admitted in an interview last year that he had requested the higher-ups to revive the sports car moniker. This was then followed up a couple of weeks later by company president Tsuneji Sato who had also publicly stated his desire for the coupe nameplate to return.
These rumours then got further kicked up a notch last month when Toyota’s in-house anime series Grip had a scene showing the words “Celica Mk8” scrawled on a whiteboard, and just a week after that it was uncovered that Japanese automaker recently re-upped its trademark claim to the Celica name.
Aside from the big news regarding the Celica, Toyota has also dropped some hints regarding the possibility of its other sports coupe, the GR 86, to possibly soon be featuring some boost under its bonnet. Best Car reports that this question was posed to the automaker at the same event, and that Gazoo Racing driver Kazuya Oshima replied the development team is “currently working on various things.”
