Czech car aficionado Adam Rejl took part in this year’s GumBalkan Rally with a rather cool-looking Toyota Celica replica based on a world-weary 2001 Hyundai Tiburon. The goal of the race was to win driving a car with less than €1,000 worth of mods installed, and Rejl made the most use of every Euro.
For starters, he mounted a humongous rear wing onto the trunk that he designed and built himself. He also added a roof box, purely for style, and applied decals to make his ride look like a real WRC racer. Note that “Tojota” and other typos are fully intentional and meant to intensify those “cheap knockoff” vibes.
He found himself strapped for cash when it came to boosting the stock 1.6-liter four-cylinder under the hood, so he just wrote “Turbo” on top of it in white paint. That was a bit of a bluff, of course, because the engine stayed naturally aspirated with 113 PS (111 hp / 83 kW) at the output end.
This is not to say there were no technical mods. For one, the car ended up with grippy all-terrain tires, two spare wheels at the back and lots of skid plates all around. Most remarkably, it received a 50mm (2-inch) suspension lift courtesy of tennis balls stuffed into the springs. This kind of tuning is humorously known in the Balkans as the “Wimbledon Package”.
Seeing that the jalopy has 245,000 kilometers (152,200 miles) under its belt, we have to commend the owner for maintaining it in decent condition throughout the years!