San Francisco Street Sighting - 1981 Toyota Celica GTA 10th Anniversary Sunchaser

I love the story behind this car. When I was going to college in San Francisco, I used to occasionally see a very tired-looking black and beige Toyota Celica driving around or parked during my walks after class. When I realized the Celica was in fact a rare Sunchaser convertible, I vowed to photograph it for this blog. Due to its poor condition at the time I feared it would soon be going to the junkyard.

Petaluma Street Sighting - 1981 Toyota Celica GT Sunchaser

Some of you may be old enough to remember that from 1977 until the early 1980s, it wasn't really possible to buy a new convertible in the United States. I'm not that old, but I do research.
I guess late in the disco era, with hairy men in tight jeans going nuts for T-tops and car thieves slicing up ragtops, nobody wanted convertibles anymore. Then came the '80s and apparently someone decided it was time to offer convertibles again, but not right away. If you wanted a convertible you could always contract a coachbuilder to chop the roof off your coupe and turn it into a ragtop. That's what led to stopgap quasi-verts like this 1981 Toyota Celica GT Sunchaser.