You’ve probably figured out what it is already: a radio! If I recall other Celicas of the era, the radio would have been fitted into the (was it double-DIN in 1980? No, looks like that standard, also called ISO 7736, didn’t get standardized until 1984) hole in that little cubby thing behind the shifter. If you were too cheap for a radio, you just got that little cubby, perfect for storing cassette tapes that you could not play in the radio you didn’t have! Yeah! Really don’t crank up that nonexistent volume!
