Toyota has confirmed the Celica nameplate is coming back, ending years of speculation, after Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Hiroki Nakajima publicly acknowledged the car is in development during an appearance at Rally Japan — the automaker’s first direct confirmation of the model’s revival — according to Autocar and AOL.

Key Points

• At the 2024 Rally Japan event, Toyota’s Hiroki Nakajima confirmed to Japanese magazine Best Car that the automaker is developing a new Celica, the first time a Toyota executive publicly acknowledged the model by name, according to Autocar’s and AOL’s reporting on the exchange.
• Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda has previously said he wants to revive what he calls Toyota’s “three brothers” — the Supra, Celica and MR2 — and the Supra already returned to showrooms in 2019, per that same reporting.
• Toyota has not issued a formal press release confirming the Celica and declined to comment further on future products when asked, according to AOL’s report.
• The last Celica sold in the United States was in 2005, and no launch date, price or specifications have been officially announced.

What’s Confirmed vs. What’s Still Rumor

• Confirmed: Toyota is developing a new Celica-branded model, and its Gazoo Racing performance division is separately building an all-new rally car for the World Rally Championship’s 2027 regulations, which has already been spotted testing in Portugal, per Autocar.
• Confirmed: Toyota filed a trademark application for the “GR Celica” name in Brazil in early 2025, according to Drive, though Toyota itself has not confirmed that name will carry over to the production car.
• Not confirmed — reported as speculation: Whether the road car will be mid-engine. Test mules have shown air intakes positioned behind the rear doors and a low hood line consistent with a mid-engine layout, which would make the car closer to a spiritual successor to the mid-engine MR2 than to earlier front-engine Celicas — but nothing has been officially verified.
• Not confirmed — reported as speculation: Powertrain details, including a rumored turbocharged four-cylinder engine, pricing, and a production timeline that outside estimates place around 2027 or later.

Toyota’s rally program has previously served as a preview ground for road cars — both the GR Corolla and GR Yaris grew out of the brand’s WRC effort — so the automaker’s return to Celica-badged competition machinery is being read as a strong signal of what’s eventually headed to showrooms, even though Toyota itself has confirmed only that the car exists and nothing more.