Celica Forums General Discussion Exterior 2001 Lower Grille

OK, so the body shop is telling me that the 2001 Celica GT did not come with a lower grille. Is this really true?

Your mechanic is correct. In the USA, the 2000 and 2001 years did not originally ship with a lower radiator grill. It wasn't until mid/end of 2001 that Toyota made this grill available as an add-on available for order from their parts department. By this time, Toyota dealers were already selling the 2002 model Celica.

And IIRC, many dealers started installing them on their 2002 models as part of a weather protection package that they could use to boost the price of a new vehicle sale with.

For the 2003+ Celica models, Toyota completely changed the front bumper design (front now has a top "wide slit grill" and the Toyota emblem is placed on the bumper, rather than plastic upper grill. The 53112-20260 grille incompatible with the new design.

A possible related post @ https://celicahobby.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/37860/02-celica-front-grill.html

Wow, that's interesting. So I purchased a new OEM grill for the same year 2001 will this fit or was their a different bumper when they started adding the grill in late 2001?

The 53112-20260 Grille will work just fine on the 2000, 2001, 2002 Celica front bumpers.

And although there is no need to remove the entire bumper assembly to install the grill, it sure makes it easier to do. I've installed quite a few of these grills, and never had to remove the bumper.

The front bumper already has all the hardware and attachment points to make adding this grill as easy as:

From under your celica:
a) unscrew a few locations from the front of your Celica's under plastics. do not remove the plastics, just fold them back.
b) insert the new grill in to place (snapping the plastic hooks over your bumper's edges)
c) re-attach the under plastic nuts, threading through the holes in the grill and plastics.

Basically, the grill install is much easier than doing an oil change

Edit: 10mm socket

Some photos can be found in the gallery @ https://celicahobby.com/gallery/index.php/category/inst-front-lip

NOTE: There is no need to remove the front lip. The linked gallery is for a different install, but it does have good photos showing what the grill looks like and it's mounting locations from the back side.

Hey Caffeeine Kid,

I am looking for that exact grille... do you know if that is avail in canada????