Toyota built its success, and still does, on amazing reliability. This was achieved in the early days at the expense of a little flair. The 70s however were different. With a buoyant home market and bags of confidence, Toyota designers let their hair down and went for something more frivolous and more sporty.

They started working on the Celica three years before its launch at the 1970 Tokyo Motor Show. With an eye on Ford's Mustang, it was never going to be bought to do the school run and was built around the company's high performance inline fours - effectively an affordable version of the Bond-film starring 2000GT supercar - later to become the Supra. And boy was it fun. For its time, the styling was revolutionary and it was an immediate hit with drivers who wanted more than just a simple means of getting from A to B. Although never intended to be a high volume car, by 1977 one million Celica sports coupes were on the road. Not only that, a Celica driven by Ove Andersson was driven to an impressive ninth place in the 1972 RAC World Rally Championship and later GT versions had great success in world rallying.