Watch a restored 1980 Toyota Celica rally car put through its paces by Neal Bates

Former and current Toyota driver Neal Bates started his rally career over 20 years ago. While that seems like a long time to have been racing, even back then a 1980 Toyota Celica was pretty old school. Mr. Bates and his friends at Toyota set out to prove that the old Celica is still cool by giving the RA40 dirt runner a full restore ahead of its ARC debut in Melbourne.

Bates, Coral Taylor and the 32-year-old Celica took first in the opening round of the 2012 Australian Rally Championship, and if you watch the video below, you'll see why. Bates put the beefed-up Celica through its paces, and it looks like he hasn't lost a step.