If you’ve been on the lookout for a new high-spec Toyota to drool over, the new GT GR and GT GR3 models will be happy to set your saliva production into overdrive. The two new vehicles are prototypes of the Japanese company’s motorsport and performance ambitions, intended to “showcase technologies never before used in a Toyota production car.”
Toyota is all about futuristic vehicles, when it’s not releasing the more reliable and boring sort you see on the road every day. The GT GR and GR3 are more forward-looking than the latter, eventually functioning as “future flagships for Toyota’s performance portfolio.” As such, they’re… well, they’re rather damned hot.
Git GT GR gud
The GT GR is Toyota’s new road-capable race car, one with the lowest possible centre of gravity the company could design. Everything about the vehicle, from driver to axle placement, was built around this position, allowing the car to “maintain practicality while maximising performance.”
Of course, the 470kW/850Nm 4.0-litre V8 helps. Toyota describes it as a “compact “hot-V” layout, with turbos mounted between the cylinder banks, [that] uses dry-sump lubrication to reduce overall engine height.” Brembo carbon brake discs, Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 types, and extensive use of carbon fibre in the body should help it attain its target top speed of 320km/h without putting the driver through a wall. Oh, yes, and there’s a hybrid motor in there as well, just to help with fuel economy and overall stealth. Can’t sneak up on anybody with a V8, after all.
Similar care has been shovelled into the cockpit, which resembles a race-spec vehicle in the case of the higher-end GT3. Because it is. Even the stock GR comes across as an advanced machine, but when you’re sticking yourself behind the wheel of Toyota’s FIA GT3-spec road car, you’re probably not planning on going slow.
The GT3 edition uses a similar design philosophy to the ‘stock’ GT, but each part is “designed to handle extreme loads, temperature cycles, and prolonged race conditions.” The GR3 will take a little longer to come out — expect it in 2027, while the GR will launch next year — but when it does, it won’t feature a hybrid engine. FIA GT3 regulations don’t support those, so drivers will have to do without.
Pricing isn’t known for either of these, but Ars Technica has an estimate for us. R8.5 million, or about $500,000, which sounds about right for something Toyota envisions spending much of its time on an official race track. If we ever get behind the wheel of either of these, you’ll all invited to the funeral that will almost certainly follow.
