Wales Rally GB WRC co-driver’s Toyota Celica emerges at street-stage spectacular
Nicky Grist treats his restored rally-winning Celica Gt-four to its UK debut at Llandudno tarmac-stage spectacular
The first closed-road tarmac stages ever seen on the British round of the World Rally Championship (October 6-7) proved a perfect opportunity for 21-times WRC rally-winning co-driver Nicky Grist to reveal his latest classic restoration – the very car that he and Juha Kankkunen made a winner nearly 25 years earlier.
Toyota Celica Gt-four
‘It’s not quite finished, but this has been a very careful restoration,’ said Grist of the Celica at the Llandudno event. ‘It’s a 24-year-old rally car and a piece of history – the winner of the 1994 Portuguese Rally – so I didn’t want to subject it to a ruthless top-to-tail restoration.’
The Ebbw Vale-born motor sports star wants it to remain a rally car, complete with all the dings and dents it’s picked up in the course of its career. ‘There are so many ex-works rally cars out there that have been restored to the point where they look like they haven’t been used, and so appear to be replicas of themselves,’ said Grist. ‘I didn’t want that. Our restoration has largely been about adding detail that’s been lost – routing of pipework, things like that.’
Getting hold of the right parts hasn’t been easy, although Grist has been lucky in that he can call upon the services of the original builder.
‘My affection for this car goes deeper than all those wins,’ he said. ‘When I joined Toyota in 1991, I spent four months in Kenya preparing the Gt-four for the Safari Rally. It has the roughest stages imaginable – rocky sections, mountains, deserts, very deep water-splashes – the sort of thing that off-road 4x4s would think twice about. The Gt-four? Not one breakdown in four months. That included driving the 5000km route four times as well as subjecting it to special-stage tests. It made one hell of an impression.
‘And then they hired Juha, and we won in Argentina – my first WRC win – as well as my home event in Wales. After that I knew one day I’d have to have my own ST185 Celica Gt-four Group A car. Unfortunately, their strength has been their undoing – they were so reliable and strong that they ended up being rallied to death!’
A friend of his found out about this one, described as an ex-carlos Sainz car in Repsol livery, but not a rally winner. Grist passed the serial number to a Toyota Team Europe (TTE) contact who replied, ’You won Portugal in this one, in 1994!’
‘I was willing to buy it even if it was Sainz car,’ said Grist, ‘but I bought it from the owner, not letting on what I knew. He was mortified when he finally found out – Wrc-winning cars are fetching huge amounts of money nowadays. I can understand why he didn’t think it was my old car though. It had been converted to right-hand drive by a previous owner in Ireland, who in turn found it in Sweden. All the mounting brackets were still there to convert it back.’
There’s no problem getting hold of the bulky bits of a Gt-four, but things like carbonfibre clutch-foot rests are extinct. Grist drove it for the first time at a recent demonstration rally in Spain – basically a rally without timing gear so Group B cars can compete.
‘I reunited it with Juha, and as soon as he sat in it, he said, “I know this is my car.” I asked him why, and he said, “It’s the gearstick. It’s been bent backwards and to the side. I sat further back than the other TTE drivers, putting the mounting point too far away, so they made me a special gear lever.”
‘I never noticed at the time. The original mechanic was reunited with it in Spain too, and he said, “I can tell it’s mine – I put the brake master cylinder in front of the anti-roll bar. Everyone else put it behind.”’
Carlos Sainz drove it, as did Didier Auriol, but its career with them was brief because of the introduction of the ST205 Gt-four, after which TTE sold it off.
‘Because I never throw anything away, I still had all the roadbooks and service books for this car,’ said Grist. ‘I still have the overalls and helmets Juha and I wore, even the tiny badges we were given by the scrutineers before the start of the rally. With this car, the collection is complete. Jari-matti Latvala tried to buy it off me, but he’s not having it. He’s ended up with an ex-armin Schwarz car in bits instead!’