Toyota has well and truly cemented its place as a serious performance vehicle brand, having found success in recent years through its Gazoo Racing (GR) road car lineup.
From the GR Yaris and GR Corolla to the GR Supra, Toyota is filling the void left by many of its Japanese rivals, but it’s not done yet.
Last year, Toyota launched the new GR GT, a Mercedes-AMG GT and Porsche 911-rivalling coupe, becoming the new flagship of its performance lineup, though there are more spots to fill.
Speaking to Automotive News, Tyler Gibbs, the president of Toyota Racing Development USA (TRD) said the North American motorsport division has been enlisted to develop an upcoming vehicle, and it’s already in the prototype phase.
“We have the opportunity to work with [Toyota Motor Corporation] on occasion to develop new vehicles,” Gibbs told Automotive News.
“We are currently building a vehicle that won’t be on the road for four, five, six, seven years. We’re building the first mule vehicle and then we’ll build the second one and the third one.”
Gibbs didn’t elaborate on what the car is, however the most obvious candidate is a new Toyota MR2.
The rebirth of the MR2 has long been rumoured and was even the centre of Toyota trolling everyone in the lead up to this year’s Tokyo Auto Salon, where the carmaker said it would reveal a mid-engined GR vehicle – only to pull the covers off a GR-modified version of the Daihatsu HiJet truck.
Toyota has been testing a new turbocharged four-cylinder engine in the GR Yaris, mid-mounted to better act as a potential test mule for a reborn MR2.
At the Tokyo Auto Salon, GR president Tomoya Takahashi said the GR Yaris test mule’s development is only in its first of four stages, which can take four to five years overall, putting a debut in the late 2020s out of the picture.
It’s unlikely the car which Gibbs speaks of is the next-generation Toyota GR Supra, as it’s believed a successor to the outgoing sports coupe will arrive much sooner than the timeline he has alluded to.
Rumours of a Celica revival have surprisingly dried up, despite it being a prime candidate for the new turbo-four engine in development, as well as Toyota executives last year confirming the existence of running prototypes.
“Bottom line is we are working on a product that could theoretically go by the Celica name If we can figure out how to pull it off and it gets approved,” Cooper Ericksen, Toyota North America’s senior vice president of Product Planning and Strategy, told MotorTrend in June.
“People are talking about it. It’s a pretty advanced development.”
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