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Nicky’s Portugal winning Toyota to be displayed at Cholmondeley

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Nicky’s Portugal winning Toyota to be displayed at Cholmondeley

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The latest addition to Nicky Grist’s rally collection will be on display at ‘Toyota Rallyfest at Cholmondeley Castle’ on Saturday 28 October, when the Toyota Castrol Team Group A Celica Turbo 4WD (ST185) he and Juha Kankkunen won the 1994 Rally of Portugal in will be at Wales Rally GB.

Nicky acquired the car very recently and debuted it at Rallyday at Castle Combe – where non-other than Jari-Matti Latvala drove it. It’s already been put back to its original TTE colours and over the winter Nicky will restore the car – putting it back to left-hand drive, taking away some of the modern fixtures and fittings and putting it back to its original condition.

The car is currently at the Nicky Grist Motorsports headquarters in Pontrilas – and in a strange twist, that is the very same building that use to be the Team Toyota GB workshop, when the team ran Celica GT-4s in the British Rally Championship in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

“The Celica Turbo 4WD is my favourite rally car,” says Nicky. “This particular car has a lot of history – Carlos Sainz and Didier Auriol have also driven it, and it’s the car that Juha and I won Rally of Portugal in. It was a great car – powerful, handled well and you could drive over and through just about anything and it wouldn’t break. It’s a lovely piece of rallying history and showing it off at Cholmondeley Castle is great, and I am looking forward to getting it back to the way it was back in its day.”