The Toyota Celica GT-Four is a high performance model of the Celica liftback, with a turbocharged 3S-GTE engine, and full-time AWD. It was created to compete in the World Rally Championship, whose regulations dictate that a manufacturer must build road-going versions of the vehicle in sufficient numbers. These vehicles are referred to as "homologation special vehicles".
The Celica GT-Four came in three generations; ST165, based on the fourth generation Celica, and manufactured between October 1986 and August 1989; the Super Round shape ST185 produced from September 1989 to September 1993; and ST205 from February 1994 to June 1999.
The Celica GT-Four production cars were built at Toyota's Tahara plant in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, and the rally cars were prepared by Toyota Team Europe in Cologne, Germany.
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The significance of the Toyota Celica GT-Four in WRC history, previously dominated by European manufacturers, is that it was the first time a Japanese car manufacturer entered the WRC with an AWD turbocharged car and took trophies and won races. Since then other Japanese manufacturers have been successful in the WRC. Toyota preceded Mitsubishi (Lancer Evolution and Galant VR-4), Subaru (Legacy and Impreza), and Mazda (Mazda 323GT-R & 323GT-X). Toyota later exited the WRC to concentrate their racing efforts in Formula One.
Toyota Team Europe (TTE) was also the first to introduce the anti-lag system (ALS) in their ST205 Celica GT-Four cars, a technological breakthrough that was later adopted by other teams.
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