Between our weekly mountain road attack sessions, our daily commutes and the occasional day at the track, our Celica can count exactly one week of rest. For the week of last year's SEMA Show, we didn't hit the rev limiter once. That's right, our rev-happy whipping boy got to play carpet queen for a week. Of course, preparation for carpet duty took more than just scraping the bugs off the front, cleaning the brake dust, and letting the red-hot exhaust cool. We had to doll it up a bit. We tend to keep our project cars relatively low-key, spending most of our efforts making the cars faster rather than flashier. But in the garish festival of fluorescence that is the SEMA Show, we had to do something to avoid the invisible car syndrome.While we had to wait months to find any sort of performance shock for the Celica, surface prosthetics were available almost immediately. Scanning the seemingly endless selection of wings, scoops, splitters and various air-snagging accouterments, we were struck by the simplicity and well-integrated style of Rod Millen Motorsports' wing. RMM offers an air dam and side skirts as well, but we thought the stock nose was aggressive enough and decided to go with just the wing.
When you pop the plastic trim off the rear hatch, these fasteners are supposed to stay with the trim piece. They won't, so you will have to carefully remove them from the rear hatch and pop them into the plastic panel before you put everything back together.
The Rod Millen wing comes in three pieces, a carbon fiber airfoil and two Fiberglas side pods. The carbon fiber is beautifully finished and is show-ready out of the box, but the side pods need to be painted body color. We dropped them off at Cypress Auto Body for a few coats of carbon blue and they were ready to install a few days later.
The wing mounts to the stock wing's mounting holes, so as long as you start with the factory piece, there will be no drilling. Our long-term car is essentially a lease car; we'll have to give it back in good condition some day, so this is a real plus. We were a little concerned that the base of the side pods was rather abrasive looking, and would probably leave scratches when we removed the wing. We hit the hardware store and got some 1/8-inch thick self-adhesive weather stripping and lined the bottom of the wing pods for protection.
To avoid scratches when we remove the wing later, we used some adhesive-backed foam weatherstripping under the side pods.
When installing the wing, you first have to remove the plastic trim from the underside of the rear hatch. There is one screw in the base of the pull handle, and the rest of the panel pops off if you treat it a little violently. To achieve a proper fit, you need to first loosely screw the side pods to the hatch, then loosely screw in the center section, tighten the side pods to the car and finally, tighten the center section. Following this order will ensure the pods seat properly on the hatch.
The wing angle is adjustable, depending on how much downforce you need. We decided we didn't need all that much on carpet and set it close to level. We run it level on the street as well--that way it doesn't block our view of the cops.
The wing mounting bolts are recessed in these holes in the rear hatch. Be careful removing the bolts, if you drop them inside the hatch, you'll never find that rattle.
Put this cap back on the new shock. This is the only part that keeps the shock shaft from poking up through the rear floor. Don't ask how we know this. | 
The tightening sequence is important to ensure that the wing sits properly. The sidepods must be tightened to the car first, then the airfoil can be tightened. | |