People Are Looking For A Lost One-Off 1977 ‘Star Wars’ Toyota Celica So Maybe We Can Help

When it comes to merchandizing movie properties, I think we can all agree that the Star Wars franchise is one of the most ardent and consistent practitioners of the art. Ever since the first Star Wars movie was released in 1977, there has been an essentially unending supply of toys, clothing, books, marital aids, backpacks, medical equipment, and essentially anything that remains stationary long enough to have a Yoda or R2-D2 screenprinted on it. This was even the subject of a very specific and protracted joke in Mel Brooks’ 1987 Star Wars parody movie, Spaceballs. Recently, there’s been a lot of talk online about one very unique bit of Star Wars merchandise, and it’s one that’s relevant to us because it’s a car.

It’s a pretty cool car, too: a 1977 Toyota Celica Liftback GT, specially customized with TIE and X-Wing fighters on the side and a big Star Wars-themed airbrush painting on the hood that replicated that famous movie poster with Darth Vader’s head looming in the background. It was created for a contest known as the Star Wars Space Fantasy Sweepstakes, a big promotion done in conjunction with 20th Century Fox and independent theater owners, and along with the grand prize of the Celica, included 1,977 prizes that included T-shirts, posters, books, and a trip to Club Med.

Seriously, they weren’t screwing around here:

In this comic-like drawing, I like how on the left there the look between Princess Leia and Grand Moff Tarkin almost makes them seem like the romantic sub-plot. Which, I mean, would have been hot.

A letter to theater managers from 20th Century Fox describes the contest and emphasizes how easy it is for theaters to implement, and also reveals the tantalizing bit of information that Wonder Bread was also a participant. Could you have won an individual slice of Wonder bread with a Wookie toasted into it? I sure hope so.

It’s interesting to see how ads of the period had to be more descriptive with their Star Wars references; today, no one needs an explanation about who said “may the force be with you,” as they felt to explain in the newspaper ad above.

A Costa Mesa, California company called Delphi Auto Design did the customization work, and the result was pretty sweet, and considering that Star Wars was only just hinting at becoming the cultural phenomenon it would eventually come to be, I bet it seemed pretty eccentric, too. Take a look at it:

I especially like how they converted the pillar behind the rear quarter window to be porthole-like, and it also featured, according to another ad,

“…a specialized paint job, a moonroof, tinted windows, and black chrome on the outside, along with plush silver carpeting and silver piping on the seats inside.”

It’s interesting that this illustration of the car does not seem to be accurate to the final car, as this has Chewbacca on the hood (!) and faces on the side instead of spaceships.

While the car itself is undoubtedly a cool pop cultural artifact of a particular time and place, what makes it most interesting seems to be that, for something that has taken on so much cultural significance – Star Wars is unquestionably one of the most important popular culture phenomena of the 20th century – no one seems to know where the damn thing is.

This has been talked about a lot over the years – in fact, the most informative article about this is from a New Zealand-based car-enthusiast site from 2017, and there’s other stories about it at least as far back as 2011.

For whatever reason, it’s been coming up again recently on various Instagram stories and in other places, and I’m not really clear why there’s this current resurgence of interest, but when it comes to hunts for lost cars, more eyes are never a bad thing, so that’s partially why I figured it was worth covering here, too. Because our Autopian Community is the smartest, most charming, and, yes, best groomed automotive community on the internet – perhaps one of you has some interesting lead to follow?

Here’s what is currently accepted about the story of the Star Wars Celica: after Delphi Auto Design finished customizing the car, it was allegedly delivered to 20th Century Fox, who in turn delivered it to the still-unnamed winner in January of 1978. New Zealand Performance Car feels compelled to hedge this, though, saying

“We say allegedly, as this is the last time the car was seen for many, many years, and the company that had built it would soon go out of business — the owner of Delphi was convicted of smuggling hash oil, while one employee was kidnapped, and another, Steve Bovan, was murdered. Some suggest, as the conspiracy goes, that the Celica got caught up in the mess and was never delivered to the winner.”

That’s a lot of chaos to saddle this Celica with, and while NZ Performance Car is wise to hedge, they later also quote a LucasFilm employee named Steve Sansweet, who described the last time the car seems to have been referenced in public, and that reference suggests that the car did find its way into the hands of a sweepstakes winner:

“Sometime around the late 1980’s or early 1990’s I was reading my monthly issue of Antique Toy World when my eye was drawn to a small black and white ad at the bottom of a page. There it was, the Star Wars Toyota, being offered up for sale by the original owner, who said it was in great shape. Here’s the killer: the asking price was just $1,000. I remember being transfixed and started thinking how I could possibly buy this primo piece of promo history.”

Sansweet didn’t buy the car, which I suspect he still kicks himself about today.

So, now, almost 50 years after the fact, the Celica is still unaccounted for. It’s possible this thing was transformed into tuna cans back in the 1990s, and it’s possible it’s sitting in mint condition in someone’s climate-controlled garage. No one seems to have any idea where it ended up.

In a way, I’m surprised no one has tried to make a duplicate and pass it off as real; it wouldn’t be easy, as the artwork seems to have been hand-airbrushed, and modern digital methods would be easy to spot, but you would think the potential rewards of selling such a car might make it worth the effort and risk.