Celica Forums General Discussion Engine and Performance Can a modded GT become a real competition to other japanese cars

Hey guys I just bought a 2002 Celica GT 5-Speed. I plan on keeping the car stock for the most part FOR NOW, other than the AEM cold air intake I installed, I was wondering even if the car is a FWD, even if the car is a 5-speed and not a 6-speed, is there a way of making the car extremely fast. Being able to role up and beat RWD 350z or a Subi. I wanna tweak up my 02 GT to the point where I can't mod it any much more. Evo's can get up to 900 whp. Supras over 1,000 hp, what about a Celica GT? a swap could be a good start? What could be the maximum WHP out of a 02 Celica. Thanks guys!

I just wanna know the type of potential this car could have to its maximum point. Not putting fucking 40 psi of boost, rebuilding the engine every damn year lol but something realistic! *Money not being an issue *

The short answer is no.

The long answer...not realistically.

Even boosted, with quite a bit of money put in, you won't hit much more than 270 WHP. Now, I'm fairly new here but I've been doing the research because I want to do the same thing. Very few people mod the Celica to be a truly fast car, as well as reliable. Honestly? It's because there just isn't enough support. My thought is to just set a high goal on 300 WHP and call it good. Work on suspension and handling. These are amazing platforms for that. When it comes to power...this isn't the optimal car. I wish it were. If you want to throw mass money into it, you can. But at that point you could have just bought a fast car with a much wider aftermarket.

If you really want it to be, what I'm looking at doing is an engine swap and dropping a 3S-GTE into it.

put in the 32-gte, rwd conversion, true dual exhaust (gonna be work being a 4cyl, but you can do it) run a cai in parallel to the turbo, take out rea seats and spare tire, put wings on it. XD