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Originally Posted by brendonwood1
In late 1986, Toyota Team New Zealand prepared two FWD Toyota Celica GT ST160s, which ran against the BMW 325is in the 1601-2500cc Division 2. I don't think they had much success. Drivers included Dave Barrow, Mark Jennings and others. If there had been a 1601-200cc class the Celica may have been more successful. The cars were raced for a couple of seasons.
As far as I know, the non-turbo FWD Celica didn't race anywhere else (unless some raced in Japan?).
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One of these Celicas was used by Toyota Team Australia at the 1987 Australian Grand Prix support race. The car is only seen in the background during the broadcast of the race, and I've only recently seen photos of the car (courtesy of 10Tenths member malscar:
http://forums.biante.com.au/showpost.php?p=297978&postcount=58). Other photos of the car later in that thread suggest that it's John Smith at the wheel.
I'm guessing that it was brought here to gauge its performance against TTA's fleet of Corollas to see whether the Celica would be more competitive against Nissan's Gazelle in the 2L class.
Western Australia seemed to have a few odd-ball Group A cars. Gordon Mitchell's
Fiat Uno Turbo from Bathurst 1986 sits at the top of the list. The car struggled at Bathurst, but ISTR that it was a mechanical problem that caused the lack of pace and, once that was rectified, the Uno ran like a jet. It also did the 1986 AGP support race, but otherwise ran exclusively at Wanneroo.
One car that I don't know much about is the
Lancia Delta Integrale that John Farrell entered and practiced at Wanneroo's 1990 ATCC round. The car was withdrawn with no qualifying time recorded, and did not appear at any other ATCC meeting. Not sure whether it appeared at any other Wanneroo race meetings.