What do you get when you combine a Toyota GR86 with a Toyota GR Corolla? The answer is a tribute to one of the 1990s most iconic models – the Celica GT-Four.
Toyota has built this one-of-a-kind creation for this week’s SEMA Show in Las Vegas, taking elements of two of its current performance heroes and combining them.The body is taken from the GR86, but underneath it has the three-cylinder turbocharged engine and all-wheel drive system from the GR Corolla. Appropriately the car is officially known as the GR86 Rally Legacy Concept, and will be on display in Las Vegas this week.
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“The aim is to evoke memories of the legendary rally car that enthusiasts have admired on rally stages and in popular racing video games,”explained Paul Doleshal, general manager of motorsports for Toyota North America. “That idea led to a formative conversation about how cool it would be to create a modern interpretation of such an iconic car.”
The challenge for the Toyota team was fitting the engine underneath the low bonnet of the GR86, which typically runs the lower ‘boxer’ flat-four engine, so changes to the front chassis were required. Similarly, at the back end, changes had to be made to accommodate the all-wheel drive differential and axles.
The white, green and red paint job is a nod to the Castrol-livery that Toyota ran on the Celica in the World Rally Championship in the early ‘90s. The team won the championship in ‘93 with Juha Kankkunen and Didier Auriol in ‘94.
The Castrol livery was also used on Toyota’s Super GT Supra and became famous with the Gran Turismo computer games, so much so that Tickford Racing featured it on Thomas Randle’s throwback Ford Mustang.
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