The emergence of the Toyota GR Corolla is a bit convoluted. It uses the powertrain from the GR Yaris, which was originally developed as a homologation special for the World Rally Championship, before a rule change meant it was no longer needed. Happily, Toyota decided to build it anyway, bestowing us with one of the very best cars on sale right now.
It then dropped the same brilliant powertrain into the bigger Corolla to satiate markets where the Yaris isn’t available, like North America, or where Toyota can justify selling two brilliant, rally-bred four-wheel drive hatchbacks, like Japan. So the GR Corolla is basically a bigger version of a car that was originally designed so Toyota could have a better rally car.
Toyota GR Corolla Rally Concept – rear
Still with us? Good, because it looks like things might end up going full circle. At the Tokyo Auto Salon, Toyota showed off the GR Corolla Rally Concept, which is… a concept for a rally version of the GR Corolla. Imaginative, we know.
Officially, it is just a concept for now, and details remain hazy on it, but it looks very much like something ready to line up on the world’s rally stages, and is clearly a fully-developed thing, as demonstrated by the video below. Rallying publication DirtFish reports that it uses the underpinnings of the version of the GR Yaris that competes in the second-tier Rally2 category.
That means the same 1.6-litre turbocharged three-cylinder as the road car, likely producing somewhere in the region of 300bhp in motorsport guise. The gearbox is a five-speed sequential unit, and a competition-grade limited-slip differential allows for silly cornering activities.
DirtFish also reports that it’s being developed with an eye on national rally series. It’s also worth noting, though, that the WRC looks likely to return to the USA in 2026, where the presence of a car based on something Americans can actually buy would be good optics for Toyota, even if it’s not in the top class.
Toyota Corolla WRC
If a rally-ready GR Corolla is in the works, it’ll mark the return of Toyota’s family hatch to the sport after more than 25 years. The iconic Castrol-sponsored Corolla WRC took Toyota to its third manufacturers’ WRC title in 1999, before the manufacturer withdrew from the sport the following year.
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