Toyota Celica 2002 test drive - 2006 compartment

"Bayonet attack." Toyota Celica express test, 2000

If we recall our tribune regarding the charged hatchback toyota allex, the main conclusion boiled to the next engine there is clearly out of place. Like, that 190 horsepower showed themselves properly, with a courage, they should not be soared in the corral of a standard hatchback, but to drive in the hippodrome, on large jumps, and it is desirable with the totalizer.
Now, now, it was possible to evaluate the same powerful motor in a more harmonious atmosphere for him, so to speak, complete with the Toyota Celica pseudo -cup. In addition, in version with a 6-speed manual. What is needed. Only now with the totalizer it did not work out properly. I wanted to take one of the classmates in a couple, but I did not come across. It is possible to draw parallels with that allex only from a sense of justice.
You can’t say right away that it is better a rounded quad -eyed carcass of the previous Celica or the faceted sharp -eyed body. It would seem that everything in it is very rapidly and in the leg, but there is a feeling that Toyota has again followed the world conjuncture. To please everyone at once and no one specifically. In my opinion, in the last model of sports meaning there was a larger appearance, although slightly amorphous, but still whole.
And in this, despite the dynamism of the lines, you can see the Last time typical for the Toyota models of the Toyota of the back of the rear lamps of the primitive shape and the overall non -casualness of the rear. He cuts the eye a little. However, you still have to think about cutting. Here it can be the main design idea. You can’t say that the image turned out to be soft. Just the opposite, and he even reminds something strongly. Something really sharp.
The trihedral bayonet is what this Celica resembles. Direct, rude and deadly bayonet. Incidentally, at one time, the wound after injection of the wound after injections of the trigrannik is very painful and poorly healed due to the inhuman consequences of its combat use.
I wonder if Celica can leave the same wound in the shower? To fight on the spot, and then did not heal?
The appearance could definitely. It is only a pity that even such a car in Japan is produced in budget white. There is some kind of neglect of your own product. It belittles its significance, and yet it is necessary to emphasize the cold steel of the body proportions in completely different colors.
Social design, of course, is interesting in its own way. The mighty pipes of collectors and mixing high technologies. VVTL-I, as you know, is a child of Toyota engineers, but the head of the block here carries Yamaha. Well, inspires. If such an eminent motorcycle company intervened here, to be something special.
And what is characteristic, the 2ZZ-GE engine, the one that stood on Allex, but the upper part, called a decorative lid, is completely different here. CELICA has individual coils and the main part of the valve cover, and in general the design of the engine is contemplative, appealing to a certain mood, while Allex, I remember, was covered with a simple plastic.
For the mood, however, there is still not enough powerful stretching between the supports of the racks. But, in all, the hardness of the body torsion is increased in the standard. And the fact that the engine here is shifted closer to the cabin also speaks of its more natural place for sports. There is not enough uninhabited exhaust. No, not that yelling through an accessory straightforwardness. Silent, but beautiful, with velvet sharpness of sound. Here the sound is still closer to the usual, without taste.
You fall into a low dense chair, the leather lever of the box on the high tunnel immediately falls under the left hand, the right hand falls on the convenient leather rim of the steering wheel, through it the predatory orange-red gaze of the devices, the chrome splendor of the pedals below. Ergonomics is extremely driver. It remains only to fit the steering wheel and chair, in which Celica also provided good opportunities.
Six purely mechanical steps. Six hard, no stolen gears. The first two short, push. It is good to scream on them with tires and stretch the cervical muscles in the anti -stitting struggle, amusing a relatively short, but very informative and enjoyable clutch pedal. But the third and fourth are already for the flight. Protracted.
On each you can bend the tachometer arrow to the red zone and revel in even and powerful overclocking. A completely different thing! Here the engine is definitely untied, no automatic transmission is hunting. Know yourself, click the necessary gear rates with short viscous pokes, eagerly reaching 180 km/h tachometer.
Yes, of course, the motor here is relatively low and not turbocharged. By and large, his work seems slightly angry, on the verge of breakdown. But he honestly performs his protracted arias. The most beautiful on the third. In it, one might say, the culmination of a bayonet attack, an extended moment of the blow! And the acceleration is decent, and it lasts relatively long, while the engine smoothly, but persistently chooses the phases. And while the revolutions do not pull up to 6.5 thousand, the enthusiasm of the engine will not subside. A good motor, but still there is not enough solidity in the sound.
From the third to the sixth gear, in general, they are close and interchangeable, which makes the drive in regular modes quite convenient, not burdened with frequent switching and selectivity, although traction on the bottoms, even in the zone of 2.5 thousand revolutions, you expect more (maybe that Is this Yamaha with its motorcycle concepts intervened?). And then still the fifth and sixth are more needed for cruising speeds. They can extend in a very wide range for Celica, starting, if at the fifth, from 50 km/h. It all depends on which asphalt to go.
On a flat smooth and 160 is not speed. The main noise seems to form the tires, and everything is in order, everything is under control. The steering wheel is poured with pleasant weight. Small waves or irregularities are not able to break the course. There is an opportunity to talk about quick overtaking at speeds for 130 km/h. Although on protracted lifts on upper gears, even a complex engine is not able to adapt well and the traction is not enough to adapt, the speed begins to fall. But along the gloomy asphalt at low speeds, the pseudo -cup bounces and dance, without making anything beautiful out of this. But!
You can’t call a stool suspension. There is in it that civil elasticity with which you can ride on our bumps, and not be afraid of any little things. No, you don’t get much pleasure, she clearly lacks exquisite plasticity in the fight against bumps. It’s just that the practical energy intensity is not sacrificed to professional sports in its short moves, and other bumps with such a suspension can be experienced normally.
And yet this is not the point. The minimum rolls, high steering sensitivity, accurate reactions and a powerful slowdown is that there is pleasure and that the engine logically decorates, which in the permissible Allex seemed to be a hawk in a cage. A bayonet with a rubber tip.
At the same time, the interior here, and in particular, the front panel is not as defiant as appearance. Without any blades. Metalized gray plastic smoothly and smoothly, as if water on rifts, washes the front sports seats. Creates a kind of protective shell.
At the same time, there are no pronounced sports elements on the panel, and in general, it looks concise. It does not distract anything, but does not particularly entertain anything. Climate management obeys the usual logic for mass Toyota and is generally convenient, although the information railway screen is clearly shallow. Even the speedometer, marked only up to 180, has more utilitarian value.
In all, people can also ride in the rear seats, in addition, the seats fold in parts, forming a through and very decent cargo compartment, albeit not high. But even the trunk itself, in the camping position, even taking into account the installation of powerful music, has the right to be called the trunk, and not the penalty pen.
Here it is, worthy of this hatchback engine! True everyday sports car. Practical Grand-Tourismo! Although, of course, you can talk about practicality and even more universality here with a fair amount of conventionality. The clearance is small, there is a risk of damaging an aerodynamic body kit, the rear seats have a duty appointment, a low landing and a small rear window opening with a looming spoiler conceal the situation on city streets.
And if you understand feelings, then in the usual city bustle, the pedals settings may lack cat softness and caution, and the box lever has excessively close movements, in a hurry you can miss.
As a result, when a bayonet attack crashes into a mess of cars, trams, pedestrians and the need to strictly monitor the pits, wells and rail crossings, there is a gun on the shoulder, and an offensive, meaningless and merciless drill begins. And, of course, time appears to the next understanding of the topic in which car in Russia to live well. In what kind of sporting and versatility are embodied in full. But there are such. Crossovers are called.
As for the last generation Celica, the car, despite its already many years of biography, does not much flash with us. Maybe the time has not yet come, or maybe what other reasons are. Purely market and conjunctural. After all, whatever you say, and since the time of the previous generations of Celica, when everything in Automir was divided quite clearly, the cult of pure breed was somewhat lost.
Now it is no longer rude and dangerous trihedrates, but good bayonet-no. The wounds from them are more humane, and they are very universal: they can cut the wire, open canned food, and even, if necessary, cut loaf and sausages.
 

 
Vasily Larin
Automarket magazine+sport
 

Source: Drom.ru