Toyota, what are you doing exactly? Will you WRC or not?
Testing of Yaris WRC mule is in progress on various surfaces. In charge of this is Toyota Motorsport GmbH, stationed in Cologne, Germany. Next up, Toyota GT86 CS-R3; status, almost done, zero-car debut soon, looking good and drawing considerable attention from privateers. Again, Cologne-based TMG is behind R3 car project as well. At the same time, Toyota is still waiting for more information from the FIA and promoters regarding new rules, set to hit WRC in the next couple of years (2017 to be more precise). That was official and confirmed. We thought that was it. But we were so wrong.
If the story published by Autosport is true, Toyota Motor Corp. is working on a third rally car, and this one is a real bomb for several reasons. First, if the story IS true, Toyota is involved in this as a company, bypassing its motor sports branch in Cologne. The development of this car is taking place in Finland and wait till you hear who is in charge of doing the garage work. I will leave that bit of info for Autosport’s article, but I cannot ignore the very interesting detail, also mentioned in this post. The third car is again GT86, but built to WRC specifications (whatever those may be, whether its the current set of rules, or some unknown mix of regulations set to arrive in 2017) and wielding a four wheel drive system.
When recently we heard that future WRC cars may originate from bigger segments, such as D, we giggled at the idea of seeing Passat WRC, but if rules will allow cars up to certain size, what’s stopping Toyota from scraping the tiny Yaris WRC and instead turning to the magnificent GT86. Four wheel drive or not.
Maybe in the end that car will be painted blue, wear golden wheels and answer to the name of Subaru BRZ WRC?
