Every one of Toyota’s 1990s performance icons has a legend all of its own. The Supra is synonymous with the 2JZ and the MR2 is synonymous with pirouetting in the hands of bad drivers. But the final-gen Celica GT-Four, the ST205, might have the greatest legacy of all. It’s the star of perhaps the greatest cheating scandal in motorsport history, one so brilliant that the FIA’s president lauded its ingenuity. Yet such a scandal casts a long shadow, and that shadow has obscured this homologation rally car’s true character.
We all have a vague notion of what the Supra and MR2 are like to drive; most of us have no such concept of the ST205 GT-Four beyond “it is turbo and all-wheel-drive.” Old rally footage and Initial D don’t give us a lot to go on, either. It’s a strange place for one of the 1990s’ defining cars to find itself, and it’s why driving one is as eye-opening as it is invigorating.
Despite a lineage that won two World Rally Championship constructors’ titles and four drivers’ championships across innumerable combinations of surfaces, the ST205 is unsuitable for anything but asphalt. This is down to a little-known, but major mechanical difference between the rally and road cars that radically redraws the boundaries of its performance envelope. It’d be just as out-of-place on a dirt rally stage as any Honda Type R, because that’s what it most drives like.
And that’s okay, because the road is where most of us do our fun driving anyway. The kind of Juha Kankkunen impression we imagine ourselves doing in cars of the GT-Four’s ilk is as hard for us as it is on them. (With parts for cars of this age getting trickier to find, you’re not gonna wanna risk breaking them all the time anyway.)
Instead, the ST205 combines the agility of a well-honed front-wheel-drive compact with the cocksureness and oversteer potential of AWD, plus the extreme styling you only get from an authentic racing pedigree. It’s as much a toast to the spirit of rally as it is to the challenge posed by the next blind corner, as it is a colossal, unforgettable failure—and like all of history’s mistakes, it’s infinitely more interesting than any easy success.
Origin Story
The ST205 was the last car in the Celica’s lineage to contest the World Rally Championship. You’ve already heard the contents of of the Celica’s trophy cabinet, so you can imagine how big of shoes it had to fill. But by the time of the ST205’s first full-season entry in 1995, the game had changed: A Colin McRae-led Subaru was reaching its zenith, and the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution was snapping at its heels. Toyota couldn’t just field an AWD version of a FWD sport compact any longer; the ST205 had to be a big step up from the successful, but obsolete ST185.
And by golly was it.
Toyota sought input from Gazoo Racing’s predecessor (Toyota Team Europe) from the start, and the race team quite literally shaped the car. Foglight cutouts and extra cooling inlets in the front bumper were matched by a vented aluminum hood, which chopped more than 17 pounds. Some cars got a factory rear wing riser (which was the style at the time), while 16-inch alloy wheels were widened to allow broader tires and bigger brakes. The calipers (four-piston fronts, two-piston rears) became aluminum, and the rotors got bigger. But the biggest changes were concentrated up front, and I’m not just talking about that cheaty engine (though I’ll get to that soon).
The ‘Super Strut’
The ST205 would utilize one of Toyota’s cleverest, but least-remembered innovations of the ’90s: the Super Strut. Introduced in 1991, the Super Strut was meant to beat the drawbacks of the standard Celica’s front MacPherson strut design. MacStruts (as they’re sometimes called) are simple, light, and compact, but they force designers to compromise on handling characteristics. Generally speaking, they don’t maintain the ideal camber settings through as much of the suspension stroke as double-wishbone or multilink setups. Toyota sought to blend the best of every world, and it worked — kind of.
The tradeoffs between MacStruts and Super Struts were explained to me by Huibert Mees, whom you may know as the suspension lead on the 2005 Ford GT and 2012 Tesla Model S. In addition to the possible camber problems I mentioned, Mees explained that MacStrut suffers from the location of their steering axis (also called the kingpin axis). This is the imaginary line between the top of the strut and the ball joint on the bottom of the steering knuckle, on which the steering pivots. Because the strut can’t run through the tire, the top point of the steering axis is pushed inboard, increasing the axis’s inclination.
This has two major effects on how a car handles. For one, it increases the magnitude of its scrub radius (or spindle offset), which is the distance between the steering axis and the center of the tire’s contact patch. When throttle is applied, the wheel will act as a sort of lever and try to change its toe. Normally, this is a self-canceling force, but when tractive force is uneven between front wheels, it contributes to torque steer.
This also affects steering effort, predictability, stability, and even returnability—the steering wheel’s tendency to center itself when you accelerate. Secondly, a steep steering axis inclination (the angle between the kingpin axis and a vertical line) can also increase camber change as the steering approaches full lock. Ever seen a car develop serious positive camber when you turn the steering all the way? That’s what’s going on when you do that.
But the Super Strut works differently, and it’s all because of a second ball joint added on top of the knuckle. This ball joint becomes the top of the steering axis, moving it outboard. Not only does this reduce the scrub radius, it also drastically lessens the steering axis’ inclination. Mees indicated it could reduce this angle from roughly 12 to 15 degrees off vertical to just 6 to 8ish. Because this is still a MacStrut-derived design, a Super Strut can be engineered as a direct bolt-on performance upgrade for a car not initially designed for high-performance front suspension. (Bonus: Mees says it’s also easier to adjust camber with this design.)
Mees also spotted another unique feature of the Super Strut that isn’t used in other automakers’ takes on the improved MacStrut concept. Unlike the RevoKnuckle on the 2009 Ford Focus RS, HiPer Strut on the 2010 Buick Regal GS and LaCrosse CSX, or Dual Axis Strut on the 2017+ Honda Civic Type R, the Super Strut features a third ball joint. It’s down on the lower control arm, which is split in a fashion Mees says is normally seen only on double-wishbone setups.
This creates what he described as a “virtual ball joint” at the intersection between these joints at the steering axis, allowing Toyota to put the pivot point somewhere that a single real joint could never be, like inside the brake rotor. This would let Toyota move the ST205’s brakes inboard, which also facilitated their enlargement. (We take for granted how widely available big alloy wheels are these days, but wheel size was historically one of the biggest performance limiters. You could only fit so much brake inside them, so you could only make use of so much power.)
Rules Are Made to Be Broken
As clever as the Super Strut was though, the ST205 is best known for its engine: the third iteration of Toyota’s 2.0-liter 3S-GTE. It got an improved intake feeding a turbo with a bigger compressor, driving boost through a water-to-air intercooler to an enlarged surge tank. Combined with extra valve lift and exhaust flow, the improved 3S-GTE reached 251 horsepower and 224 lb-ft of torque across a widened powerband. It’s backed by a five-speed manual that splits power through the front and rear wheels via a viscous center differential and across the rears using a Torsen limited-slip diff.
Of course, what etched the ST205 into legend was hardware not included on the road car.
Flash back to 1995, near the finale of the WRC’s now-beloved Group A era. To head off the hard-to-drive cars and even harder-to-control crowds of Group B, the FIA had mandated restrictor plates that limited cars to about 300 hp. In theory, all cars should’ve been equally quick in a straight line—but RallySportMag.com indicates Toyota drew suspicion during a Rally Australia special stage when its cars noticeably out-dragged the championship-leading Subarus. Something was amiss, and with one race left in the season, what that was came to light.
The circumstances of how the FIA found out what was up don’t seem to be publicly recorded, but at Rally Catalunya, the FIA supposedly received a tipoff to investigate Toyota’s restrictor plate. Per RallySportMag above, it found that Toyota had been using a restrictor that looked completely legal when it was removed for inspection, but when it was installed (a special tool was used), something unusual happened. An internal spring mechanism would pull the venturi-shaped restrictor off the turbo inlet by five millimeters, opening an internal bypass that let extra air through around the outside of the restrictor.
How much air? Apocryphally, 25 percent, or enough for a supposed 50-hp advantage. The mechanism had been designed and manufactured with such care that FIA president Max Mosley was quoted by RallySportMag calling it “the most sophisticated and ingenious device I have ever seen in 30 years of motorsport.” This is coming from a guy who’s seen it all, and then some more. Toyota Team Europe was disqualified from the season and banned for 12 months, knocking the ST205 out of the running for the ‘96 manufacturer’s title, the final year of Group A’s rally heyday. The Celica would never win another WRC event.
But the road car’s legacy is as different from the race car’s as the two cars are mechanically. Obviously, the road cars had no need for race safety gear or a restrictor plate, and couldn’t run their powerband-broadening antilag. That’s not what I’m talking about, though. Toyota may have homologated the ST205 with the Super Strut, but multiple sources (notably UK GT-Four specialist GT4-Play.co.uk) agree that the WRC cars actually reverted to conventional MacPherson struts.
See, for all its advantages, the Super Strut came with more snags than a rosebush. The double-jointed link in the lower control arm articulates with steering input, moving the location of the virtual ball joint, and therefore shifting the steering axis as you turn the wheel. Not only does that change the scrub radius and the steering axis inclination, it also messes with the caster. Mees speculated that as you approach full lock a Super Strut’s advantages might actually invert and worsen a MacStrut’s worst characteristics. It might amplify torque steer and reduce returnability; matting the throttle might force the steering wheel farther instead of helping you straighten it up. If you’re trying to slide through a gravel hairpin, for example, Mees said a Super Strut “may not be as advantageous, especially in a rally car where you see very high steering angles. In a race car for pavement or for tracks, you actually don’t see that much steering angle, because the turns are fairly big.”
The full details of the WRC car’s front suspension setup aren’t publicly known, but Toyota’s WRC team manager at the time, George Donaldson, told Dirtfish that the Super Strut was “far, far, far too complex for a rally car.” It’s generally held that Toyota tried to use the Super Strut (again, we know it homologated the design), but gave up—the proprietor of ST205 specialist GT4-Play told me this was the case in an email.
Unverified accounts from around the net hold that for one reason or another, Toyota continued to use MacStruts in the WRC following the Super Strut’s introduction. Maybe it was a band-aid fix when Super Strut parts weren’t available, as one forum post suggests, or maybe the heavier, more complex Super Strut simply failed more than Toyota expected. Another forum post asserts that the ball joints wore out in as little as 200 kilometers (124 miles) in race conditions, causing handling to degrade rapidly. Any of these, from a hasty reversion of suspension design to a half-dozen busted ball joints, could explain why WRC Celicas always looked so hard to drive. In any case, the gains on tarmac seem to have been more than offset by the losses off it, with yet another forum post claiming ST205s lost eight seconds on dirt for every three they gained on asphalt.
In any case, the road cars didn’t have to deal with rally stages of course, and therefore retained their Super Struts. The homologation cars exist in their untested, platonic ideal forms; they’re what the rally cars were supposed to be. They’re artifacts from when Toyota thought it was escalating the WRC arms race, they’re mechanical incarnations of retrofuturism. The ST205 anticipated a brighter future than the legacy it’d actually carve out for itself—or have carved out by eagle-eyed FIA scrutineers.
The ST205 is preserved, uncrushed hope for what’s to come. And you feel it when you slide into the driver’s seat.
Build Notes
Before I explain, let’s touch on the condition of the 1996 GT-Four I drove, which is owned by a friend. It rolls on mustard-yellow 17-inch wheels wearing 245-section tires that are a little oversized — they rub. The handling is tightened by poly bushings, tubular rear links, and aftermarket coilovers. Despite a full three-inch downpipe, exhaust, and tuned standalone ECU, it makes about stock power. It’s stiffer than factory, but it’s still readily apparent how much of that tightness is Toyota in origin.
Cheater Cheater, Asphalt Eater
The GT-Four may as well be the muse of every ’90s and ’00s boy-racer. Its enlarged grille and fog lights probably helped inspire the body kit and rally lighting trends, and the array of vents and bulges on its hood make it as greebled as a Star Destroyer. We as humans tend to conflate symmetry with beauty, but there’s an equal appeal in the intentional, functional asymmetry of the hood’s driver-side intake that cools the timing belt. (Yes, really.)
I’ve never personally been a fan of the short-lived quad-headlights fad of the late ‘90s, but to each their own. It’s more than made up for by the jutting rear wing, which is so tall that you can take landscape photography through it. See what I mean?
Aside from sticking the wing further into clean air, another benefit of that height is that it doesn’t block the rearview mirror from the driver’s seat. Lowering yourself into said Recaro bucket is another reminder of the GT-Four’s homologation origins; it’s tricky to get into, deeply bolstered, and hugs you like you’re heading off to war. Its classic Recaro confetti upholstery is a delightful retro touch, and adds character to what is – aside from the instrument cluster’s boost gauge – an otherwise run-of-the-mill Celica cabin.
It’s a typical sport compact of the era, which is to say economy materials and more emphasis on front seat space than the rarely used rears (which are barely adequate for post-adolescent Americans). There is electronic climate control though, which late-Millennial me will always consider fancy.
The driving position is familiar to me as the owner of a contemporary MR2. The steering wheel is spaced appropriately from the body, with pedals that aren’t too deep in the wheel well and positioned perfectly for heel-toe in all driving conditions. Back support is optimized for someone a couple of inches shorter than I am, but it’s reasonable once you find your sweet spot. When you have, a turn of the key brings to life one of the GT-Four’s other hallmarks: its multi-disciplined engine.
The 3S-GTE is somehow a juxtaposition of infamy and obscurity; a WRC title-winner that some people nevertheless toss out in favor of a Honda K-series. (MR2 owners really annoy me sometimes.) After lurching away from a stop with a heavy, grabby clutch, this Yamaha-influenced two-liter builds power well for an engine of its vintage, though in a way that’s unmistakably ‘80s.
This was before automakers had figured out how to make a turbo-four torquey and responsive off the line, and there isn’t much torque for cruising below the low 2,000 revs. The turbo doesn’t come on quickly either, with noticeable lag even when the powerband opens up above 3,000. That delay gives you time to anticipate, and therefore appreciate, its arrival, which compels the Celica to lunge forward.
The soundtrack is just as old-school as the feel, with a grumbly, low-tech exhaust note. It’s distinct among four-cylinders, and it might be at its very best when you downshift from mid-range with a big exhaust. It catches a bellowing, resonant growl like you might make when beating your own personal best deadlift. It’s a noise of pure, visceral satisfaction.
Not all of the GT-Four’s primitiveness is so pleasing, though. Like its relative in the same-engined MR2 Turbo, the transaxle is a Camry derivative and not a purpose-built performance box. Sturdy? Very. But the ST205 doesn’t shift as nicely as its Honda contemporaries do, especially with age. The five-speed’s ratios are spot-on though, with a terrific all-purpose third gear and a fifth just tall enough for highway cruising. It ticks a little high on the interstate, but what can you do?
It’s ironic how unsophisticated the homologation car’s powertrain feels given the reason for the ST205’s legacy in the first place. It was, and may still be, the greatest example of cheating in racing history, seemingly devised to make up for an ambitious but unsuccessful suspension innovation. The reasons for its failure don’t apply to the road car though, meaning it drives more like how Toyota meant it to: like an unusually sharp-nosed AWD performance car.
The chassis is tight, almost lithe, without the laziness of many MacPherson strut cars. The small dead spot in the steering’s center is escaped the instant you add lock, and it continues to comply the further you lean into it. Its short, sub-100-inch wheelbase lends it further agility, as do these oversized 245 tires. More than anything, it drives like a particularly refined FWD car—it reminds me most of the Honda Type Rs I’ve driven. Only, with extra forward traction, and a more active rear. Also, a better brake pedal: Firm and response up top, and predictable to the bottom. (Honda’s brake pedals lack this linearity in my experience.)
It feels like it shouldn’t be revelatory that a FWD-based AWD car drives like a FWD car, but I’ve driven enough rally-style cars now that it comes as a surprise. This is part of why the GT-Four is so comforting to drive at a sustained high pace compared to cars of its type. It doesn’t feel liable to plow wide like many AWD cars do, nor do so backwards as an over-driven MR2 might. The more you trust it, the more it rewards you.
So, despite being slightly brutish, the ST205 doesn’t intimidate you. Plant the throttle, and the mighty little 3S can be felt throwing its back into it. Heaving in the direction you point the steering wheel. You instinctively want to match its cadence; to trust it, huck it, and go flat. The GT-Four moves in its entirety with this rhythm, and it’s utterly intoxicating.
Know Before Owning
Parts availability for ST205s is “kind of all over the place,” according to this car’s owner. There’s significant carryover with cars sold Stateside, from the glass it shares with regular Celicas to drivetrain components also seen in the Camry and MR2. Some prominent MR2 shops (like TwosRUs and Prime) support it too.
This specific generation of 3S wasn’t sold in the States, however, so some basics have to be sourced from abroad. And not just from Japan, either, as the GT-Four’s popularity in Europe means there’s significant support for them there. The Super Strut not being a GT-Four exclusive also helps with maintaining a GT-Four, though it’s still pricey to do so. That also goes for the brakes, whose pads are shared with the turbo Supra, though rotors are unique items you must import.
Icarus Incarnate
The GT-Four was destined for greatness, if not necessarily in the way Toyota meant. I can’t say for sure if the devious restrictor bypass was meant to compensate for the Super Strut’s failings, but the connection isn’t hard to imagine. The result is a road car truer to the ideal Toyota intended, an ironic inverse of the usual road car-race car relationship. For once, the car you can buy and drive on the road is probably the better of the two.
That road car is unusually optimized around its asphalt domain, less loosey-goosey than rally-oriented cars usually are. The ST205 is less like a Subaru STI than it is an Audi TTRS, or again, even a Honda Type R. The GT-Four is a sharp, ultra-predictable FWD-based car, but augmented by AWD and pleasantly contrasted by a uniquely old-school engine. Peaky but encouraging, the ST205 instills in you the attitude with which Toyota imbued this car: an eagerness for the coming challenge, be that a whole WRC calendar or merely the last corner between you and home.
Top graphic photo: James Gilboy
Always enjoy seeing your work here James.
Aside from the obvious Group B gloriousness (albeit it at the death toll), Group A is still one of my favorite times for rallying. Cars still looked basically identical to what you could actually buy and drive on the road.
James, thank you for writing such a thorough and well researched article. I look forward to reading more of your work in the future.
I had trouble wrapping my head around the cheat mostly due to the 2D drawings, but in this video (around 7:35 if the link is borked) shows the shape of the restrictor and how it could allow so much air to bypass.
https://youtu.be/Ab1_dUugdsE?t=463
Thanks for the link. Like you, I had a hard time understanding it in 2D.
Huh?? Doesn’t that mean it wasn’t really tuned, more like “let’s load a default map on it and call it a day”?
Powerband lower in the rev range? Way more torque? State restrictions?
Yeah this raises lots of questions, a tuned stand alone ECU should uncork 10-20%.
How about shoe-horning the entire engine and 4wd system from a GT4 into an Austin Mini? I’m sure it can’t take long…
Huh, that was the first thing I thought of doing…
The 6th gen Celica has always been my favorite, it must’ve just hit at the right age (SEGA Rally didn’t hurt either!) And I’m all too aware that “This specific generation of 3S wasn’t sold in the States”, trust me. Though I thought they were sold north of the border? Need to check on that, would possibly be easier to import than a RHD model like the one in the article, though it’s still a beauty.
When Lancia officially bowed out of world rallying in the early 90’s, I thought for sure Toyota had a good chance of filling the vacuum they left behind. I never saw Subaru coming to the scene.
I love the story about Toyota’s restrictor plate tomfoolery. A very Japanese way of doing a very un-Japanese thing.
I thought TTE was behind the cheat though?
I haven’t ever seen one with the confetti backseats, I had an ST205 but mine just had boring Toyota seats. Super fun car when it ran right, but man I had tons of issues with that thing. Still one of the coolest cars I’ve owned.
The sheer unmitigated 1990’s-ness of that seat fabric is giving me synesthesia. I can basically taste Surge and hear the Rocko’s Modern Life theme just looking at it.
I have a 1990 Celica GTS from the Toyota Pro / Celebrity race series, driven in 1990 by Dwight Yoakam. He finished without crashing it, I bought it last year.
But given a choice, this is the Celica answer for me. (Although I miss both MR2s I had, 87 and 88 supercharged.)
Super cool car. Too bad about that front end though. I’d much rather the ST185 with the iconic pop-ups.
It’s definitely a love it or hate it, but I have always loved this generation. I had a convertible, and then one of these GT-Fours a while later. Both were a lot of fun. Both had a large number of issues, but they were fun anyway.
I don’t *hate* it, I just don’t love it like the previous generation. I’m also not a fan of the US Acura Integra four light setup and prefer the JDM long horizontal lights. I do usually like cars with two round headlights though, weirdly enough. I guess having four triggers a slight kind of tropophobia maybe?
Yeah I don’t like many cars with the 4 headlights, but I have always liked these Celicas. The Integra definitely looks better with the JDM lights. With that, let’s just forget that the 4 eyed Tiburon ever existed please.