External Rebirth
Greetings! I’ve decided to start my first blog which will be used to document my efforts of revitalizing the exterior and interior of my 1994 Toyota Celica ST.
A bit of history…
In high school I had inherited my older sister’s 1979 Celica when she got a new car for high school graduation. It had already started to die out mechanically when I received it, but we kept it going for a while. In 1995, near the end of my senior year, my parents bought me this 1994 Celica ST basically as a graduation present. I may have contributed a little, but I don’t remember. Looking back, I am very thankful that I was not strapped financially buying a car all by myself. We got it about 1-year used from Grey Daniel’s Ford in Jackson, Mississippi. It had around 37,000 miles on it. I remember thinking that that seemed pretty high, but I wanted to call the previous owner anyway to ask about its brief history. The lady that had owned it was a home health nurse. So she was driving all around the area from house to house which explained the high mileage. I also asked her why she was getting rid of it, and she told me she just needed something larger. Fair enough; so we bought it almost on the spot. We had been looking around for Celicas for a few weeks, and this one seemed like the best deal.
For the first few years, I was pretty dedicated to keep it clean and pristine. Washing it was something to “do” on the weekends (though I might have over-washed it).
Later came marriage.. and children after that. We started building a house in 2003. And, ahem, I sorta used my hatch-back conveniently as a truck bed. Looking back, I should have just found an old truck to haul stuff in. With changing priorities and needs, I kinda just let me car “go” (inside and out), from an up-keep standpoint. But, of course, any factory paint jobs will break down after spending years in the baking sun of this fallen world.
However, circumstances are such right now that I have an opportunity to put forth a little bit of effort and money to revitalize my poor-ole-neglected, but yet-still-trusty Celica. I drive this thing 30 miles to work and back everyday, so it’d be nice to do it in a cleaned up vehicle.
It now has around 206,000 miles.  I’ve had almost zero trouble from it, and it has never left me stranded. I’m not normally very sentimental, but at this point it has a bit of that kind of value to me. I’m basically committed to driving it until the wheels fall off. After that I’ll probably put them back on and drive it some more though. After all, unlike many people, I own my car. I figure that if I put just a few hundred dollars into it each year on average, then I come out much better than having bought a new one. I think I’ll probably be buried in that car. (j/k)
Anyway, doing a project like this I hope will be satisfying and fun. Admittedly, this is not a project anywhere near the size of some others’ you hear about. (I once saw a post by a guy who cut the front-half of his Celica off and replaced it with another one!) I am not doing a complete strip-down and rebuild. No significant engine work is planned. I’m comfortable with its limited horse power for now. (The benefit being that I still get ~30 MPG as I have since I bought it in 1995 with very little upkeep).  I’m simply trying to make the exterior and interior pleasing to the eye once again.
I plan to put some useful links to the side where I found help or a supply of parts.
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