Today is May the Fourth — Star Wars Day — and while fans celebrate the saga with everything from midnight movie marathons to limited-edition merchandise drops, there’s one piece of Star Wars history that nobody has been able to celebrate for nearly half a century: a one-of-a-kind Toyota Celica that simply disappeared.
It’s the kind of story that sounds like the plot of a movie itself. In 1977, the same year that “Star Wars” exploded into theaters and changed American pop culture forever, Toyota partnered with 20th Century Fox on a promotional sweepstakes. The grand prize was a fully customized Celica. A California custom shop airbrushed the iconic film poster artwork across the hood and reproduced imagery from the film itself down the sides. It was, by any measure, a rolling piece of movie history.
Then everything went sideways. The shop that built the car became embroiled in a nightmare of legal trouble — drug charges, kidnapping, and murder. The sweepstakes was quietly shelved. Whether a winner was ever chosen or the car was ever handed over, nobody seems to know. No announcement was ever made. No records have surfaced. Even the vehicle identification number has never been found.
At the time, nobody thought much of it. Star Wars was a pop culture phenomenon, sure, but the idea of a promotional Celica becoming a priceless collector’s relic wasn’t exactly on anyone’s radar in 1977. The car slipped into obscurity without so much as a classified ad.
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It wasn’t until decades later, around the time “The Force Awakens” was generating its own cultural frenzy, that the hunt began in earnest. Writer and missing-car investigator Dean Shada took up the search on behalf of a client in the film business. Shada told Fox News that he reached out to the promotion company, to Toyota, and to anyone else who might have a paper trail. Every lead went cold. Most of the people who would have known anything had since died, and whatever records once existed seem to have vanished just as completely as the car itself.
Shada did turn up one sobering detail: two of the airbrush artists who worked on the Celica told him the clearcoat used on the custom artwork was flawed. It degraded quickly. Even if the car still exists somewhere — parked in a barn, tucked in a warehouse, sitting unrecognized on a used car lot — the spectacular Star Wars artwork that made it special may have long since faded away.
That’s the haunting footnote to this mystery. The 1977 Toyota Celica was a handsome car in its own right, a sporty compact that was genuinely ahead of its time in the American market. But without the artwork, there’s nothing to distinguish this particular Celica from the thousands of others that have long since met the crusher.
Today marks 49 years since Star Wars first hit American theaters — the film opened on May 25, 1977 — which means this Celica, if it still exists, is nearly a half-century old. A Celica of that vintage in good condition is already a sought-after collector car. One with documented provenance as the official Star Wars sweepstakes prize? The value would be incalculable.
So on this Star Wars Day, as the franchise continues expanding with new films and streaming series, the mystery of the Star Wars Celica endures. Somebody out there may own it without knowing what they have. A family member may have inherited it. It may be rotting in a field somewhere in California. Perhaps a bounty hunter like The Mandalorian can come to the rescue.
Have a tip on the missing Star Wars Toyota? American Cars And Racing wants to hear from you at info@americancarsandracing.com
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