When a brand registers an old model name, we often bounce back in our chair. Now that is the case with Toyota, which is re-establishing the Celica name.
It is a registration with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the British reports Autocar. Have you seen that pass by somewhere recently? That’s right: after all, Ford’s model name Thunderbird appeared on Wednesday. So now the Celica. That makes you think; is Toyota coming with a new Celica or are we getting ahead of ourselves? As with the Thunderbird, it could simply mean that Toyota wants to secure the model name in case it wants to do anything with it in the future. Still, we secretly hope that something concrete will happen with it.
It is still pretty quiet around the successor to the GT86, while Subaru’s twin brother BRZ already revealed two months ago. Officially there has also been no announcement from Toyota that ‘the new GT86’ is coming. Yes, there will be a successor, but what’s it called? The name GR86 has been circulating in the corridors for a while, GR stands for Gazoo Racing of course. Two letters that we find on more and more Toyotas, such as the GR Yaris. However, because of the fame of the name Celica – and the fact that the GT86 can be seen as a spiritual descendant – people may choose that name in the US. We wait and see.
The Toyota Celica was one of the Japanese brand’s longest-running models. The first generation appeared in 1971 and entered the European market in 1972, and the curtain fell for the last in 2006. In 2008, we first heard of the ‘successor’, which was to be developed together with Subaru. That of course became the GT86 / Subaru BRZ.