Toyota has revealed a stunning new GT3 concept car at the Tokyo Auto Salon and pretty much confirmed a road-going version
Last week we had a double teaser from Toyota ahead of its presence at the Tokyo Auto Salon. One car was quite clearly a new, more hardcore version of the GR Yaris since revealed to be the GRMN Yaris. The other was more mysterious – a racing concept that looked like no other current Toyota.
There’s a good reason why. Now fully revealed, we can see the GR GT3 concept is a clean-sheet design.
It has a long bonnet, a low roofline sweeping towards the rear of the car, and a general sense of meanness about it. Toyota has said precious little about it, save for one very important statement:
“As was the case with the GR Yaris, by commercializing motorsports cars rather than simply adapting production vehicles for use in motorsports, TGR intends to use feedback and technologies refined through participation in various motorsports activities to develop both GT3 and mass-production cars and further promote making ever-better motorsports-bred cars.”
You see, GT3 rules stipulate the existence of a road car – you can’t just turn up with a prototype. Normally, manufacturers will base their GT racing contender on a current production car, but Toyota is doing things the other way around, a little like what Mercedes did with the GT1-dominating CLK GTR back in the 1990s.
Toyota will be creating a racing car first and spinning off the road car from that. The pair will act as big brothers to the road-going GR Supra and the GR Supra GT4. No timeframes for either car have been divulged, but we’ll be watching this space with great interest.
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