Maybe it’s because I spent a few years stuck in the backseat of a Celica growing up when my mother decided that her trusty 1975 Oldsmobile Omega was just a bit too far gone to continue on. Maybe it’s because of what I did to that poor car that she never found out (and my luck, she never, ever will learn about). Or maybe it’s because of the infamy of what went down for Team Toyota Europe during the 1995 World Rally series, but the Toyota Celica GT-Four is one of those oddball bucket-list cars that I’d love to try out one day. With only a couple thousand of the all-wheel-drive turbocharged wonder rockets made for the ST205 variation (2,500 total production, actually), the likelihood that I get to slip my frame into the driver’s seat and let 251 horsepower go berzerk through all four wheels is not looking good.

What you are looking at here isn’t an actual race vehicle…it’s a Japanese-spec GT-Four now living in British Columbia, wrapped with the livery of the final World Rally car…the cheating one. It looks good. It sounds good. And with plenty of dirt roads to try out in the Okanagan Valley (and vehicle owners who probably encouraged the act), we get to see what the street car is like, from the weirdness of the Japanese television set in the dash to the fun of kicking an all-wheel-drive homologation special around on some fire roads. The rally cars were wild back in the day…that’s what an extra 50 horsepower or so over your nearest competitor will get you!…and the street cars were plenty potent.

Who would’ve thought a Celica would be a bucket-list car?