For a while there it looked like mother nature was going to piss all over the parade, but instead, She turned on a glorious sunny day for us to spend cruising and talking crap about cars… Celica’s in particular.
The day started early for me applying the finishing touches to Ella ready for the day (read… Bolting stuff on, and polishing stuff off) ready to make it to the meeting point at the Ettamogah at the allotted time 
Classic Celica Appreciation Day this year for me had a lot of excitement attached to it. Having seen other peoples Celica’s go through big changes in the lead up to CCAD in the last few years, and me looking with, in a lot of cases, outright envy at what was unveiled each year left me with that “I want some of that action” type feeling. This year Ella went through a lot of changes in the last month leading up to this event, and this was going to be her first outing in her semi complete state. Nothing spectacular, but for me, a metric arseload of work. I just wanted to get on the road!!
I arrived at the Ettomogah to find Hammo (PH@_Man), Hiro and Sarah in her RA28 chatting away, followed shortly by the arrival of the Radrollaz guys. For a while there it looked like there were going to be more Corolla’s in attendance than Celica’s, but then the Canberra Celica Group rolled in with a convoy of about 7-8 Celica’s ( spent too much time gawking, not enough time counting ) to bolster the numbers.
And they kept coming… Toymods Club President arrived in Frosty and furnished Hammo with the keys to the venue, and we sent him ahead to meet Dunebob at Wisemans to fire up the BBQ in readiness for our arrival. And finally the Central Coast / Newy Guys rolled up with Toyman and DavGT4 in tow to fill out the numbers at the meet point.
My count at the meet point was 30 Classic Celica’s and 12 Modern Classics. However Sarah decided that there was some housewarming party that was more important than Classic Celica Appreciation Day and didn’t join for the Cruise.
About 11am the group was called in for a brief on the cruise, and we hit the road. Being Events Co-ordinator this year I was tasked with leading the cruise. To facilitate leaving the meet point quickly so not to splinter the group too much we turned left out of the venue then did a U-Turn at the next round-a-bout and came back past the meet point. Right then, I knew it was going to be a good day out. It’s just not often that you drive past so many awesome Celica’s going the other way. I know there were people videoing the Cruise exiting the venue… Post that shit up!!!
We cruised at an easy pace to keep the group together along Windsor Road and turned off onto Pitt Town road towards the regroup point. For the majority of the cruise I had Tweety following me, damn, that is a bright paint!!
I pulled over at the regroup point and jumped out to watch 40 odd Celica’s pull in spread back some 300m along the road, that was a pretty awesome sight to behold indeed! As the last Group Came over the hill, we pulled out for the more twisty section of the cruise, and my chance to put Ella through her paces with the new engine / suspension setup. Every so often, I’d look in my rear vision mirror (once my eyes had adjusted to Tweety’s searing yellow paint) I caught glimpses of a long line of Celica’s strung out behind, and I really wished the road was dual carriageway so I could drop back and drive amongst the group.
Ella behaved well for the most part, reverberating the sound of 20v & trumpets off the hills as the throttles were cracked open coming out of corners, the only distraction to that was the odd intrusion of Tweety’s 3T-GTE. Sadly we got caught behind a 4wd for the last stint, but still, better than sitting at home on the couch.
As we came down the last couple of tight turns into the last 15km/h U-Turn I found Stitty and Co struggling to remove lens caps from cameras and playing with tripods each side of the U-turn, probably should have blipped the throttle a little more to give some fore warning, but hopefully the guys organised quickly and grabbed some good snaps as the rest of the cruise rolled through, looked like a good location for some pics!
As opposed to the last few years we were aiming to compress the cars a little this year to make group photos a little easier, and to make socialising easier. Upon arrival, my plans kind of went out the window as others had arrived and were already parked up, so the only semblance of organisation was trying to keep 22’s with 22’s, 23’s with 23’s etc…. meh close enough.
Hammo, Bananaman and Dunebob had been busy, and the Toymods Marquee had been erected, and sangas had been twisted, and ready for lunch, so after some thought as to how to keep the line moving, I started taking money and had Bananaman, mynameisrodney & PH@_man taking turns slinging Snags and avoiding getting 3rd degree burns from the BBQ. Somewhere about this time, Vito arrived a little dusty from his B’day celebration the night before (as is tradition) and devoured more than his fair share of sausages.
For me the rest of the day was a bit of a blur, I was more or less around the BBQ area and didn’t get to check out all the Celica’s in attendance too closely, but the attendance definitely looked like they were enjoying themselves. Almost as much as people enjoyed the gelato supplied by CoffeeFest (event sponsors) . In previous years there were often left overs, but this year, they were all sold out and the dry ice used for science experiments by the kids of various attendees.
The Event seems to draw different Celica’s each year, and there were quite a few standouts I’ll have to hunt around for build threads to check out a little closer.
Big thanks for those who helped out doing various tasks throughout the day with special mention to the newer board members Chris, Ian, Bardin & Hammo for jumping in and getting Ice / drinks and keeping the snags going to keep up with the demand.
Also thanks to the Spoot boys for organising the transport of the BBQ & Marquee to & from the event and to the Radrollaz guys for supporting the event.
And thanks to CoffeeFest for being event sponsor and supplying the gelato that got demolished. If you frequent Macquarie Shopping Centre, drop in there for some awesome coffee!
And finally thanks to those who attended to make the day what it is, the Central Coast / Newy guys for organising and heading down and to the Canberra Celica Group who have been big supporters of the event since inception and to the Sydney local Celica owners who turn out in numbers to bask in all things Celica!
Total count of Celica’s ( A or T chassis)
TA22 – 12
TA/RA23 – 12
RA25 – 1
RA28 – 6
Total of 31 Classic Celica’s (no RA40’s this year?)
RA60/65 – 2
MA61 – 3
MA70 – 3
ST185 – 4
ST205 – 1
7th Gen – 1
Total of 14 Modern Celica’s
Total of 44 Celica’s on display at the time of count + Sarah’s RA28 at the meet point.
Cheers
Simon
Toymods Event Co-ordinator
