do you ever wonder how many of 'them' are left?

[dacheat]

holy balls i'm impressed also i'm hating mah job today. nothing to do with your impressive mb collection though.

I dunno... I have over 5000 Matchbox cars.

 

[Celerity]

On a sidenote, classic Pontiacs have an accurate registry.

I owned my old Celica GTA and found out what it's figures were. I called up my dealer, (the one it was originally bought from) and talked to another long-time toyota dealer about the lineup. I found out from them that 800 were brought to the US, and the west coast got models with sunroofs, east did not (Same as the old ASC trick) and then found it was based on dealership performance. They had a limit of 4 to sell in 1981.

Then I called Toyota California, again - looking for their documentation (I was trying to get the necessary stuff to take the car to Christie's auction house) and they told me that they have a pretty good record of them being removed from DMV records pre-1990. We decided that there were 4 to about 100 of them left in the world.

But honestly, the only ones we KNEW about for sure were on the web. That made mine one of 3 "known to exist" until a TAPRecycling ad showed us a 4th. Toyota helped me to interpret the VIN.

I had #13, 1 of 800 with about 4 known to still exist.

See how I built that statement ?

 

[dacheat]

that's fukkin awesome! see maybe baseball isn't my thing, but for some reason random car triva stuff is. thanks for sharing!! ps my first car was an 80 celica GT 'lim ed.' hatch - great car but i confess, nfi what a GTA is so i just googled; boggled by the results as to what yours looked like. could you link a pic for me?

yup i'm a jap car nut. it's decided. ps nut is not to be confused with expert in any way shape or form (obviously).

 

[Black Widow g2]

I have seen the number 10 1992 Integra GS-R. No one knows how many still exist from that year, or who owns number one, but it's pretty impressive to look at the vin and see all those 0's at the end.

 

[Celerity]

ps my first car was an 80 celica GT 'lim ed.' hatch - great car but i confess,

nfi what a GTA is so i just googled; boggled by the results as to what yours looked like. could you link a pic for me?[/quote]

If you googled "celica GTA" the 4th result is my for-sale post. The link has changed to the gallery. Here it is:
Untitled


The 80 Limited Edition hatch was a Canadian market car. Canada didn't expect that model to be released anymore (It was supposed to die off in 1981, and what we know to be the 1982 was supposed to be sold)(But the 3rd gen Celica was suspended to be released with the Supra). There were fewer than 2000 of the limited editions (And they had Supra dashes. Were pretty much Supras with the 20RC)

In 1981 Japan had about 2000 "Rally Sports" to sell. 800 were to the come to the us with the 18RG twin cam motor. Those cars were stopped at the California docks for emissions, and 800 of them had their engines removed and brought to the dealerships with no motors. The 22R was delivered to install, but the mounting point of the 18RG made it so that only the automatic transmission would make the engine fit on the mounts. If you bought the 1981 GTA you were taking delivery in 1982. IF you wanted a 1982 Celica you had to wait until summer 82 and if you wanted an 82 Supra you would have to wait till fall or winter (My dad picked his up in 1983 because he wanted it to be black) The backlog remained that way while sales plummeted. They repeated the process in 1986 with the 86.5 Supra and toyota finally lost all of it's Supra sales in 1990 (The first year they actually sent Supras back for recycling)

Toyota logistics were CHAOS until 1993. Here is another interesting piece of trivia - the 1997 Supra was called the 15th anniversary edition. Putting it's original date at .... 1982. Ignoring the first gen completely.

 

[Celerity]

I have seen the number 10 1992 Integra GS-R. No one knows how many still exist from that year, or who owns number one, but it's pretty impressive to look at the vin and see all those 0's at the end.

You can bet it's over 20,000 units produced. Honda doesn't know the meaning of "limited edition". My 91 Civic was the first car I had ever owned with production figures above 10,000.

 

[Black Widow g2]

I'm not saying it's not a lot, it was, but as for how many have been parted out, crashed, etc... I don't know how many are left, but I am sure there are still many. This was number 10... and it was in show perfect condition. He kept it completely stock, too. True collector's piece. I was in love with it. But it was red.