VIVA FOREVER
A COLLECTION OF TOYOTA’S RALLYING GREATS
Rallying is a brutal mistress, punisher of the smallest mistakes, and a world in which 10ths of a second are all that is needed to propel a driver or car from ordinary to extraordinary. Toyota knows the highs and lows of rallying all too well, and it is one of a few manufacturers that found success in Group B, Group A, and World Rally Championship (WRC), amassing 46 rally wins, five Driver titles, and three Manufacturer titles. It is an impressive resume that Toyota wrote across 27 years of competition, with a raft of iconic cars in all corners of the globe. Many fans will remember the sights and sounds of these cars in competition through the ’90s. Standing on a narrow embankment in the Motu Special Stage, ankle deep in mud, you could hear the cars well before they appeared. The angry anti-lag, crackling and banging as it echoed through the air, was like an approaching thunderstorm rolling across the farmland. In the blink of an eye, the iconic Castrol livery appeared, then, in a hail of stones and mud, it was gone again, while the special smell of exhaust fumes and hot brakes was left hanging in the air. It was an era when, as a spectator, you knew that you were witnessing a crossover of legends — the old hands such as Juha Kankkunen, Björn Waldegård, and Armin Schwartz doing battle with the new breed of driver in Tommi Mäkinen, Richard Burns, and Colin McRae.
Now, a couple of decades on from the heat of competition, the next-era rally fan has the chance to come face to face with some of
the most iconic cars to have ever snaked and slithered up the world’s most famous special stages. Names such as ‘Björn Waldegård’, ‘Juha Kankkunen’, ‘Didier Auriol’, and ‘Carlos Sainz’ on doors instantly command a sense of awe and admiration from fans, while rallies such as Monte Carlo, Safari, and Corsica demonstrate the range of conditions in which Toyota was capable of winning. Toyota is extremely proud of its rallying history, and its display in the Toyota Mega Web cafe located just out of Toyko is a powerful symbol of that. To have such a raft of the same manufacturer’s rally cars in one place is a rare thing in itself. Vinyl liveries peeling, dented doors, rollover damage, and faded paint make the story these cars tell as bright and colourful as their exteriors.
The saga of Toyota in rallying began in Sweden back in 1972, when the well-established Swedish driver Ove Andersson was asked to drive a Toyota in the RAC Rally. Andersson had no idea what these cars even looked like, so he jumped on a plane to Japan to see if he wanted to sign on for the rally. A deal was struck, and he subsequently won his class in the event, which led to more rallies throughout Europe in 1973, just as Toyota was pushing production
“rallies such as Monte Carlo, Safari, and Corsica demonstrate the range of conditions in which Toyota was capable of winning”
cars into the European markets. With the European market already a tight ship, gaining trust with the people was best achieved by beating the European cars on the rally stages, the true test of rugged reliability and performance.
When Toyota got cold feet with the fuel crisis of ’74, the manufacturer really wanted to cease competition, despite very promising results. Andersson, however, wanted to keep going so flew to Japan and returned with $250K’ worth of spare parts and several cars that he filled his freshly purchased garage just outside of Brussels with, and so Toyota Team Europe (TTE) was born. Chronologically, the Tokyo-based cafe collection kicks off from when the rallying world was screaming sideways up the Yellow Brick Road to Group B. The TA64 Celica was introduced at a time when the rallying world was about to be rocked by the introduction of four-wheel drive (4WD) — but the TA64 had an ace up its sleeve that others didn’t throughout the Group B era.
Traditional engineering offered up both ruggedness and reliability, both of which the TA64 had in abundance. This unbreakable reliability meant that Toyota won the one event that everyone wanted to from 1983 to 1986 — the Safari Rally. So dominant was the team in the rough conditions that the Celica received the nickname ‘The King of Africa’ at the hands of Kankkunen, Waldegård, and Per Eklund. As Group B reached its pinnacle in 1986, TTE was finally on the 4WD bandwagon, with development of a monster to replace the TA64 in full swing. Codenamed ‘222D’, the MR2 weighed in at 750kg and was tested with 559kW, giving it an insane 1:1 power-to-weight ratio. Eleven prototypes were produced, with many being written off in testing accidents. However, Group B was cut at the end of 1986, so the programme never saw competition. Andersson stated that, in testing, the car had three seconds of lag before the power came on, and, when it did, the car was violent and very scary to drive. The 222D is a perfect example of where rallying as a sport was heading — there was lots of power and a total disregard for safety. Only three of these insane cars remain today, and one of the mythical monsters calls Tokyo home.
“So dominant was the team in the rough conditions that the Celica received the nickname ‘The King of Africa’”
As Group B was culled, Toyota’s adventure in the WRC was forcibly shifted — to the now-legendary Group A Celica GT-Four, which was, coincidentally, developed alongside the 222D in the same workshop. The ST165 came onto the scene in Corsica in 1988 and was the first 4WD car fielded by TTE. Initially, niggles with the 4WD system held back results, but, by 1990, and with Sainz and Luis Moya securing the Driver Championship, Toyota finished second in the Manufacturer Championship, which gave the team reason to feel confident. As the 1992 season approached, the ST165 that had done so well with Sainz and Waldegård behind the wheel was retired, and the ST185 came into active service.
This was undoubtedly the most successful Toyota of the team’s rallying history. Sainz, Kankkunen, and Auriol won the Driver title with this car from ’92 to ’94, and Toyota was Manufacturer champion in ’93 and ’94. This era ushered in the team’s most wellknown livery when it partnered with Castrol to create the iconic white, red, and green cars that would adorn the WRC until 1999. This was an era when the cars truly spawned from their production car roots, and fans were able to go and purchase a GT-Four Celica that actually resembled the one they would see on the stages. You had a raft of drivers who were more like gladiators, and the Championship wasn’t decided until the last day of the final rally of the season. It was a time when a rollover meant that you kept going with no windscreen and half the car fallen off, and retirements were punished with championship-destroying levels of severity.
The year 1995 would prove to be one that the team would rather have totally forgotten. TTE was banished from the WRC midway through the ’95 season to the end of the ’96 season for a cheat so elegant and so devious that FIA president Max Mosley labelled it “the most ingenious thing I have seen in motorsport for 30 years”. A cleverly developed turbo delivered 25 per cent more airflow than regulations allowed, delivering as much as 56 additional kilowatts, which made the ST205 a formidable opponent. In a year when Auriol and Kankkunen were head to head with Subaru, the two TTE drivers did, at times, wonder why their cars were always so lightning quick. Upon scrutineers realizing that the cars’ turbos were illegal, an instant ban was enforced, and even after Toyota went and lawyered up, the ban still stood. Many
“This era ushered in the team’s most wellknown livery when it partnered with Castrol”
credit the ST205 as being the odd Toyota out, as, while it was, for many, the prettiest Celica, the cheating scandal will always loom over it like a dirty dark cloud.
As soon as the ban was lifted in 1997, the team returned, dawning the third era of rallying that TTE would compete in during WRC competition. The WRC era of rally car had arrived, and, while the Celica was out, an all-new Corolla was in. Bred under the new WRC regulations that took shape from a front-wheel-drive massproduced model, the Corolla was visually smaller, with shorter overhang, but it had a wheelbase almost identical to the Celica’s. The small, compact size produced some issues with fitting all the equipment in the car, so the engine was fitted transversely and mated to the new Xtrac sequential gearbox. Sainz and Auriol were drafted back to drive through to the end of the 1999 season, when a shift in focus was announced with Toyota entering the Formula 1 circus. For many, this was the end of a very long and glorious era that had seen the demise of rally in 1986 and then a rebirth of a new golden era through the ’90s.
The great things about the Toyota Mega Web cafe display are that there is no charge to see the cars, there are no glass walls between the exhibits and the public, and there is plenty of seating around the display, so you can just grab a seat, sit down, and soak it all in. Many fans were initially disappointed when Group A arrived on the scene after the Group B era, but what many of them didn’t
know was that Group A was to throw up an exciting platform that would reignite interest in the sport all over again.
Despite the ’90s seeming to be a long time ago, all the cars at Mega Web are maintained and still able to be turned over and driven, and they do get taken out for demonstrations and moved around for the public to see them in person. The lone staff member says that, when the cars are taken in and out of the complex, they are usually driven. “The 222D sounds incredible driving through the shopping mall after hours,” he laughs. “Even now that Toyota is back in WRC with the Yaris, I think [that] these are the cars we will be remembered for; even though the new car is competitive, we will never see a comprehensive calendar like we did in the ’90s.”
As a diehard rallying fan, standing in front of these cars brings back all those memories, growing up leaning against a fence at Rally New Zealand waiting to see my motorsport heroes once a year. Despite no flying gravel or anti-lag, the same goosebumps came flooding back, and that is a true testament to the importance that Toyota plays in the story that is the WRC.