Toyota Australia’s 10 Million Dollar Gamble Pays off
The following is a transcript from our wide open throttle podcast
Welcome to another Wide open throttle 10 minute shallow dive on…
The GR Yaris is Toyota’s first solely designed and built sports car in over 20 years, Toyota it seems has woken up it’s sports car division from out of hibernation ... yes they’ve already released the great 86 and the Gazoo Racing Supra, both ‘arguably’ Toyota products, but this time they’ve decided to go it completely alone like old times... and the first car on the list is one they need to sell 25000 cars to meet homologation rules for the World Rally Championship in which they want to compete!... So this car needs to hit its mark!
And hit the mark it does!
Toyota Australia broke the internet this past week announcing it was to invest 10 million dollars into the first 1000 cars sold online to boost the initial sales, The Toyota GR Yaris is on sale in worldwide markets for the equivalent price of $49,950 plus on road costs. Toyota Australia said bugger that!, we’re gonna introduce the GR Yaris to 1000 lucky Aussie enthusiast’s for just $39,950 drive away pre-selling all of them in just 1 week. I think I even heard at one point they thought this would take 12-18 months... all it took was one bloody Week!
Now to give some quick specs and the performance figures, the GR Yaris will only be released in a much wider 3 door Hatchback form that somewhat resembles the everyday Yaris its based on, made from lightweight materials including a carbon-fibre polymer roof and aluminium for the doors bonnet and the tailgate, coming in at only 1280kg on the scales. Now combine this with the lightweight adjustable all wheel drivetrain and the fact that the GR Yaris will be powered by a brand new 1.6 ltr 3 Cylinder Turbo engine producing a huge 200kw and 370 Neutron bombs as Jake puts it. This will give the GR Yaris an overall power to weight ratio of 156kw per tonne. Now to put that into perspective it’s 12kw/ per tonne more than the current Subaru WRX STI or the VW Golf R and if you could only change through the 6 speed manual gears quick enough you might just be quicker in the 0-100 too with Toyota claiming it can do the sprint in 5.2 Seconds flat, i’d actually put it ahead of that i think Toyota is being a little conservative, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon when we get behind the wheel some time after its November release.
Bringing The GR Yaris to a quick stop it comes with 356mm ventilated discs up front with four-pot callipers and 297mm ventilated discs and twin-pot calipers in the rear.
Some other niceties include auto air-conditioning, keyless smart entry and start, Apple CarPlay6 and Android Auto6, played through an 8-speaker JBL5 sound system. The GR Yaris is also fitted with a rear spoiler, sports seats with suede and leather accents, aluminium pedals and dual exhaust tips. That bits straight from the press release!
In conclusion, I think Toyota are taking us older guys who can remember back to the glory days of the 90’s hero car, the Celica GT4. By basing this new wide bodied GR Yaris around an all-new light weight all wheel drive platform and squeezing all the available Kw’s and neutron bombs from the high revving 3cylinder turbo, it has the performance on paper to be a huge improvement over any Toyota Celica GT4 variant released back in the day based on just the power alone and I think it’s certifiably one that could lead the way in the current hot hatchback market of today and the foreseeable future.
Its amazing what technology can achieve...given time.