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1999 Toyota Celica
Convertible
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Seller's picture from 2005
In
2005 I bought my midife crisis car. I have
now driven it over 200,000 miles, mostly incident free until July 2025
when a someone attempted a u turn in front of me on my way to work.

The
insurance estimate came in for $5,600 for a $450 fender, and a $250
headlight, a few other parts, and some labor and paint. The $450 fender on their estimate
hadn't been made in decades, I might as well have tried to purchase a
live t-rex as that fender. Liberty Mutual, my own insurance
company, tried to total the car for
about $4,000 when two comperable cars (with fewer miles) were listed at
$20,000 and $25,000 on eBay. California requires a vehicle to be
totalled when the repair cost exceeds 75% of the value of the vehicle,
so I would have an uphill battle driving the valuation of my car from
$4,000 to at least $7,500 to avoid having the car totalled and becoming
completely useless to any collector as a salvage. Liberty Mutual
would not even consider those comps,
invoking the "we commit legalized fraud whenever we want" clause I have
yet to find in my policy. When I complained to the California
Department of Insurance, they told me I had to wait 30
days, but after waiting they did nothing other then tell me I would
have to sue Liberty Mutual. Liberty Mutual and the California
Department of Insurance both suck. I withdrew my claim to keep the Celica from being totalled.
They only way to get a Celica
fender is from a junkyard or eBay.
In September I found that exact fender in my color from the exact
same
car on eBay for $650 including shipping. It was packaged poorly
and arrived bent. Fortunately they took it back and I didn't have
to pay any shipping - when I looked into it I found it costs a minimum
of $300 to have FedEx ground beat, drop and bend your fender across the
country. There have been no other Celica fenders on
eBay.
I
checked picknpull.com a few times and found zero
serviceable fenders.
I eventually resigned myself to the
fact that my car never get fixed and
would always have a broken rusting fender.
I continued to drive it even as shards of glass continued to fall out of the broken headlight through the fall.
In October I ordered a headlight on eBay and spent an entire Saturday
prying the bent fender enough so I could remove the front bumper and
replace the headlight.

The front bumper is attached to each fender by three small bolts - my top bolt was quite unaccessible in the accident damage.
I used a jack to push the fender away from the frame enough to access to top bolt.

Aftre hours of effort the black middle bolt that holds the bumper to the fender is visible in the lower left.
The out of focus 10mm socket in the upper left is on the top bolt.
Eventually I got the headlight installed using a longer bolt than the
original and a stack of washers to adjust for frame damage.
I wasn't able to aim the headlight from under the hood because the frame was pushed in about an inch, the adjusting screw is now only accessible by removing the tire and wheelwell.
The headlight isn't aimed well at all, but I have two headlights and can legally drive it at night.
The passenger side headlight is aimed properly and provides decent coverage.

Fall 2024 - headlight "fixed"; fender less dented.
On Friday May 30, 2025 I checked
picknpull for the first time in nearly a year and was shocked to see
that a red 1997 Celica coupe had just arrived two
weeks prior in Rancho Cordova, about two hours away.

Even
better, the picture clearly showed that the fender I needed was intact. I figured there was no way the
fender would still be there two weeks
after the car arrived, every Celica enthusiast in Northern California
trying to restore one of these must have been there by now.

Saturday morning I
drove out and
was shocked to find the car in awful
shape, but the fender was still there and was nearly perfect - just
some scratches in the paint from hitting debris at freeway speeds, and
my passenger side fender already had matching scratches..
Christmas came early! Someone had
removed the front bumper, which requires removing most of the fender
bolts, so I had the fender off in just 10 short minutes.

After I removed the fender from the donor.
The
other fender had a large dent but might be servicable if one was
desperate enough and willing to bondo the dent. The rear bumper
and quarterpanels were perfect, but the trunk was shut and the
key was missing so they were all inaccessible. I thanked the
donor car for its sacrifice and left it to its fate.

I had read online that Celica
convertibles have slightly different
fenders than coupes.
The bottom of the 1997 coupe
fender in back of the front wheel had a
bracket where it bolts to the frame

The bottom of the 1999
convertible fender has a larger hole where it
bolts directly to the frame - this is my car.
I got lucky, in an hour or so
using a hacksaw and a drill I was able to
modify they coupe fender to go on the convertible. It would be much
more challenging to figure out how to do it the other way around if
necessary.



Now that it is all back together the minor damage on the front bumper
from the accident is noticable, but that means the fender now looks right.
The bright sunlight shows the red paint on the rest of my car seems more faded than the new bumper.
I left the bass sticker on the
fender as homage to the donor car.