W
HAT if I told you not all street machines
were V8s? “Sure,” you’d say, “there
are plenty of mean six-packs out
there!” Yeah, but nah; I’m thinking
even less cylinders.
When you’ve slammed your classic
four-banger to the weeds and ditched the stock
engine for a grunty little JDM twin-cam, the flat-
cap-and-elbow-patch brigade don’t want you,
and the import boys lament the lack of plastic
and ‘pssshew’ noises. Troy Barker’s RA23
Celica sits right in that no man’s land, so can we
give it a home in the pages of Street Machine?
If you’ve thought: “Ken Oath!”, read on. If you’re
about to fire up Facey and give us a spray, read
on anyway.
We caught up with Troy at Adelaide’s recent
All Japan Day, where his Toyota stood out like
big orange balls against the retro-original tin and
plastic-fantastic imports. “I had one as my first
car,” he said. “All the kids at school had Geminis
and Commodores, that sort of thing. The Celica
was definitely something different.”
Troy hooned around in that RA28 liftback for
three or four years but wrote it off when he pulled
an all-nighter before an exam, fell asleep at the
wheel and rear-ended a ute. While doctors
stitched his nose back onto his face, Troy made
the decision to one day find another Celica. “I
can’t explain it; they’re just fun to drive!”
A decade on, Troy found this peach, a nanna-
spec 2.0-litre auto in sporty Toyota Orange- With a minty-fresh interior and very little
rust, it was the perfect base for Troy’s vision of
Celica perfection.
“I didn’t go full rotisserie or anything like that;
the car was clean enough,” he said. “Honestly,
I just gave it a closed-door respray.” Not that it
was just a case of spray-and-pray: “My dad and
I fixed up some small rust spots and made sure
the swage line down the side was crisp.”
Despite the extreme stance, deep chin spoiler
and ‘hippari stretch’ tyres, Troy had a stipulation- to run original metal wheelarches. “The guards
are heavily rolled and pulled; a lot of people run
flares, but I wanted to keep it clean. It was a bit
more of a challenge!”
Those JDM alloys – SSR-brand Mk IIs –
measure 14x8in on the front and a whopping
(for a little four-cylinder) 14x9 on the back, yet
the Kumho tyres are comparatively narrow 185s.
“Getting the Japanese-style stretch was the only
way I could run silly-wide Japanese wheels,”
Troy said. But getting a tyre joint to fit them was
another thing. “They’ve got to use a bead-blaster
or an old technique where they use lighter fluid
and blow the tyre onto the bead!” he laughed.
“These actually went on pretty easy; they’re so
much crazier in Japan!”
Troy assured us the tyres are safe once
the rubber is on there, although keeping the
pressure correct is important, as it is on any ride.
Although Troy isn’t chasing quarter-miles,
more power is a prerequisite if you enjoy driving,
so the Aussie-spec 18R-C SOHC engine was
dumped for a rev-happy 18R-G twin-cam, as
fitted to the Celica GT in Japan.
“I sourced the motor from eBay years ago; in
fact I’ve got two of them now, which is great
as they’ve become really hard to find and really
expensive!” said Troy as he tilted the bonnet
forward in typical 70s Japanese car fashion.
“They’re not a high-powered motor, but they’ve
got a bit of a cult following in Japan.”
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