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Some time back I wrote about a Mazda 323 rally special. I think it is time to talk about another rally based sports car; The All Wheel Drive Toyota Celica GT-Four ST185. The ST185 is Toyota's most successful rally car. It won the WRC Driver's Championship in 1992, and the WRC Manufacturer's and Driver's Championships in 1993 and 1994. We'll start with some history before I talk about driving it. The GT-Four 3S-GTE engine features an air-to-air intercooler and a single twin entry turbo. The JDM GT-Four has 225PS of power and 304Nm of torque. The Full-time 4WD system in the GT-Four has viscous coupling limited slip center differential and some models were equipped with a Torsen rear differential. The non JDM export market GT-Fours are wide-body with flared fenders (1990 onwards). The JDM GT-Four was also offered as normal body upon launch in 1989 and in August 1990, the wide body GT-Four A was added into the Japanese lineup. The UK/EU model I had a chance to drive had 203PS and around 275Nm of torque. This was predictable of export versions of Japanese cars. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, catalytic converters were not equipped on Japanese Domestic Market cars and export versions usually have emissions control systems and these were power strangling. This was the practice in the good ol' days where engines made power without any hassle or pretense of being clean. You pump in petrol, the engine produces power. It was as straightforward as that in Japan and most of Asia back then. Of course, the United Kingdom being part of Europe had already started on emissions control. The UK car I drove in '00 was owned by a good friend of mine. This rally special was brought back from the UK when he completed his studies there. Sometime in the late '90s my friends and I adored this car with the same reverence as the classic GC8 Subaru Impreza, the Lancia Delta Integrale and the Ford Escort Cosworth. It was one of those rally specials with scoops, spoilers and those big fat arches. These cars were the epitome of what a rally bound muscled sports car should look like and we ate it up everytime one passed by or when we saw a review of it in the magazines. So when we all grew up, graduated and started working, we wished for one of these as the car that we wanted to own. However, this pal of mine was luckier, he went to UK and managed to buy one for around

[extract] Around 1995, or the days long before the Mazda 3 existed, a friend managed to convince his father to buy for him a newer car for him to run around to college and back. Lots of excuses were given from the supposedly unreliability of his old car to