I had a corolla t-sport before my current car, very similar performance to the celica t-sport apart from the stupidly high ride height of the corolla causes high speed aerodynamic issues, once i'd lowered mine the high speed performance seemed to increasse dramatically.
As for the engine there awsome little things but they suffer from a pretty poor ecu map, with a hole in the mid range just before the high cam comes on, this makes the car feel like its not accelerating until you hit 6krpm, the car is actually quick enough below that point, its peaking around 124 lb/ft at around 4krpm which for a 1.8 is pretty good, it peaks again at 6800 at around 133 lb/ft, its the dip in torque between these two points that cause all the complaints. A bit of ecu tuning will correct it, breathing mods go someway to hide it and removing weight from the car makes it come alive, hence why its so good in the elise.
As it stands my corolla had more go about it below 5000rpm than my 2 litre 197bhp celica, infact it was a good bit quicker at any revs so there you go.
All in if you want something perfect out of the box then there probably not for you, they are flawed, if your a modder then these are cracking engines with a lot of potential, but not for everybody.
