Toyota Celica GT-Four (ST185)
Why 6.1: Carlos Sainz took the 1992 drivers' title in it, Juha Kankkunen the 1993, Didier Auriol the 1994, and Toyota the manufacturers' championship in 1993 and 1994 — the first for any Japanese marque. The road car exists to homologate that, and unlike the ST205 that followed, Toyota genuinely sold it in America as the All-Trac Turbo.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
The 3S-GTE has a deep, slightly gruff four-cylinder note and the turbo supplies the rest, fair enough for a WRC homologation. Toyota tuned it as a GT though, with more insulation and less edge than its rivals, so it is the quietest of the rally-bred fours.
4-cylinder · turbocharged · 7,000 rpm redline · rated 5.3 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €23k (1990) → €39k (2026), trending up · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
Built before ISOFIX existed, so there are no anchor points at all. A child seat here is a seatbelt installation, and the belt geometry of the period was not designed with one in mind.
Derived from production years and seating layout, not a per-car source. ISOFIX was standardised as ISO 13216 in 1997, required on new EU model types from 2011 and on all new EU cars from 2014.
The long version
The ST185 is the middle and most successful of the three GT-Four generations: a 2.0-litre 3S-GTE turbo four with a viscous-coupling centre differential, permanent four-wheel drive and, in the homologation cars, a limited-slip rear. Output depended on where you bought it — 225 PS in Japan, around 208 hp in Europe, 200 hp for the American All-Trac Turbo — and the kerb weight of roughly 1,400 kg makes it a rally car in the old sense, quick everywhere and unbothered by surface. Its record is the reason anyone remembers it: Sainz's 1992 drivers' championship, Kankkunen's in 1993, Auriol's in 1994, and back-to-back manufacturers' titles that made Toyota the first Japanese manufacturer to win the World Rally Championship outright. The homologation specials — the European Carlos Sainz Limited Edition and the Japanese Group A Rallye — carried the water-spray kit, uprated intercooler and closer ratios the works team needed. Values collapsed in the 2000s while these were just old Celicas and have risen sharply since, and the good ones increasingly sit in collections rather than on rally stages.