Not all images were able to load for printing. Please close the print window and try again. The New Toyota GR GT & GR GT3, An End Of The Year Knockout Duo
Gazoo Racing, Toyota's department of race bred mad scientists, go all out with the GR GT and GR GT3!
After years of speculation, rumours, teasing and will-they-wont-they stories, it is finally here! Toyota’s ultimate performance car, the GR GT! And to put their money where their mouth is, they immediately released a GT3-spec race car alongside it, aptly named the GR GT3. And although looking at the brand’s current catalogue of mostly hybrid and electric SUVs in all sorts of sizes, you perhaps wouldn’t pay much attention to it, but this car can rely on a serious racing pedigree! After all, Toyota has had huge successes in rallying, GT racing, endurance racing and so on. So it has big shoes to fill, but the ingredients seem all there! Let’s take a closer look!
With the Corolla and Celica WRC, the TS-010 and GT-One endurance racers, the thunderous 7 and many others as leading examples, it’s fair to say Toyota knows a thing or two about racing. They’ve had a crack at virtually every conceivable global racing series, including the big ones like Dakar, Le Mans and Formula 1. Although the results might not always reflect it (Formula 1 wasn’t a particularly successful adventure), Toyota is every bit as capable as any other manufacturer of playing in the big leagues of motorsports. And naturally, that rubs off on its road cars as well. The Celica is legendary for its rally wins, and likewise, the Supra is famous for its many Super GT wins and titles, to name just two. So, how does this GR GT fit in all of this? Surprisingly well, it seems!
Toyota Gazoo Racing
The GR GT is developed by Gazoo Racing, Toyota’s department of mad scientists with a penchant for making things go fast. From the humble Yaris to the lively GT-86 and the mighty Supra, Gazoo Racing has had a crack at a lot of things. But it’s not just road cars they are messing around with, as Gazoo Racing is also responsible for the multiple times WRC champion GR Yaris Rally1, the four-time WEC and three-time Le Mans-winning GR010 Hybrid, the desert-conquering and Dakar-winning GR DKR Hilux and so on. It even had the audacity to take the very-limited Lexus LF-A and its high-revving V10 to the track!
But it all started in 2007, when a group of Toyota employees and test-drivers, including Mr Aiko Toyoda, then Vice President for Toyota, competed in the Nürburgring 24-Hours. They couldn’t operate under the name of Toyota Motorsports, as they were not part of the official racing team of the manufacturer. Instead, they opted for Gazoo, a word that translates to “image” from Japanese. The name stuck, and eventually, Toyota Motorsports GmbH, based in Cologne, Germany, rebranded itself to Gazoo Racing. From 2015 onwards, all racing under Toyota and Lexus switched to Gazoo Racing, essentially creating a new “works” racing team. In 2017, things became even more official, as the Gazoo Racing Company was finally officially established.
Gazoo Racing’s focus is primarily on rallying, endurance racing and the Dakar, three very different types of motorsport competition, but three in which Toyota has historically been very active. Next to that, it also develops road cars for both Toyota and Lexus, including sportier versions of existing models. The first official GR-branded road car was the 2019 GR Supra, followed by the GR Yaris in 2020, the GR-86 based on the GT-86/BRZ co-developed with Subaru in 2021, the 2022 GR Corolla and now, the GR GT and its GT3 spin-off.
The GR GT & GR GT3
The GR GT is officially labelled as a Grand Tourer, meant to cruise down to the Mediterranean at speed, and in great comfort. But to me, it looks mean as hell and ready to pounce as soon as you even look at the accelerator. What we have here is a low-slung, long-bonetted brute of a GT, packing a rather potent 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 that comes from Toyota themselves, but more on that later.
The GR GT has been expected for quite some years now, although not always under that name. With the end of the Le Mans Prototype era in which the GR-010 competed and won, and the introduction of the new Hypercar class, speculations about a new racing car and road-legal homologation model quickly started to take form. To the point that Toyota showed a working, running prototype of a potential future hypercar for the road and the track (see above). None would come of it, though, but this GR GT can perhaps best be regarded as the long-awaited and omitted answer to the question we all asked back in the early 2020s: “What’s cooking, Toyota?”
Back in 2022, Toyota unveiled the GR GT3 Concept car, which this production-ready GR GT largely takes after in terms of design. With an aluminium space-frame chassis (a first for Toyota!), front mid-engine layout and drive to rear wheels, it promises to be quite an exciting car. Especially if you consider that twin-turbo V8 I mentioned earlier, which, combined with a single motor hybrid system, will be pumping out at least 640bhp and 850Nm of torque, so says Toyota. It’s also a so-called Hot-Vee engine, with the turbos mounted inside the 90-degree V-shape of the block, if you’re interested.
All this is wrapped in a rather aggressive exterior shell, largely made up of CFRP or Carbon-Fibre-Reinforced-Plastic panels, keeping the weight down to around 1,750 kilos. The design is pretty impressive, with a long nose and your bum sitting just in front of the rear axle. Up front, it’s characterised by quite a mean look thanks to big air intakes and light units connected to the grille. The hood shows a couple of heat-extractors and intakes, and there are more vents behind the front wheel. Moving down the side, we see yet more aero in the side skirt and above the prominent rear wheel arch. Around the back, there is a large ducktail rear spoiler, dual twin exhaust tips and lots of vents, cuts and slashes to guide the air out and off of the car.
The interior, finished in bright red leather for the unveiling, shows the typical stuff you see nowadays. An interactive screen to control the car, a small selector for the 8-speed automatic gearbox, a flattened steering wheel and a digital instrument cluster. As a two-seater with this much power going to the rear wheels only, I also suspect it will be quite lively, so the leather-clad sports seats are a definite must! Although Toyota is hush-hush about the GR GT’s performance numbers, it’s sure to be a very fast machine!
And then… there’s the GR GT3 race car. Based on the same platform as the GR GT, it obviously takes the aero to a much higher level. That means more slats, more vents, more intakes, a massive rear wing and diffuser and so on. Add to that a roll cage and racing interior, and it all starts to add up to an FIA GT3-certified car that will be replacing the Lexus RC F GT3 that’s currently being used in racing. There’s no official power output given for the GR GT3 as of yet, but it will come down to the then-valid FIA regulations, of course.
What the future holds
The Toyota GR GT and GR GT3 are said to hit the road and the race track in 2027. So there will still be a bit of development work undertaken, it seems, before we can see, hear and feel what these brutes are really capable of. Toyota has also announced that the GR GT, the road car, will not be sold through the regular Toyota dealerships. Just how it will be sold in the end, though, remains to be seen. Price-wise, we’re also left in the dark a bit, but according to a statement by project manager Takashi Doi, we should be looking at prices of other GT3-derived race cars of today, such as the Porsche 911 GT3 and Ford Mustang GTD. Right…
And finally, as an interesting tidbit of information for you, there’s also an all-electric replacement for the Lexus LFA based on the same GR GT platform in the works! Again, nothing official yet, so will have to be quite patient for the foreseeable future as more details are revealed. One thing we do know is that it will be more powerful and faster than its petrol-powered Toyota-badged counterpart.
For more details, please visit ToyotaGazooRacing.com.
Editorial Note: All information and images are sourced from previous articles or sourced from and used with permission of the Toyota Motor Corporation and Toyota Gazoo Racing Company, unless stated otherwise.
