The glue for its new Toyota badges had barely dried before a few engineers subjected a Corolla iM hatchback (previously called the Scion iM) to some good-old backwoods rally competition. We’re not entirely sure why the Toyota R&D engineers decided to enter the nearly stock, 130-hp compact into the Rally America race through the Ojibwe Forest in Minnesota, but we can’t blame them for having a little bit of fun. And they happened to earn a third-place finish in their class along the way.
Toyota says the rally was meant to be a learning experience for the team of engineers, who originally did a test run in a separate rally event in June before competing in the Ojibwe Forest rally this past weekend. The first run was in a completely stock iM, but the team made a few modifications to the car for this latest race, swapping in beefed-up suspension components and adding extra plating to the underside of the car.
No matter how cool the iM might look with its rally wheels and huge mudflaps, we’re not expecting to see a Subaru WRX-fighting, roadgoing rally edition of the Corolla anytime soon. But the rally iM will live on, as it prepares to compete in the upcoming Lake Superior Performance Rally in Houghton, Michigan, later this year, where it will race alongside the Toyota RAV4 Rally driven by Ryan Millen.
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