Most Celicas are GTs, which have only 140 hp. They're not very roomy inside and they have high insurance rates. Headroom with a sunroof is actually worse than my Miata with the top up.

There are a lot of reasons the Celica didn't sell well, one of the main ones is price. Toyota always sticks some combination of options on their cars, and the Celica GT with an automatic transmission and that options combo stickers at like $22k. That's a whole lot to ask when competing against the base RSX which is over $1000 less, and a bunch of other cheaper cars.

But hey I've already said all of this stuff in the N&R thread which was linked to.