Wednesday, 25 October 2017

Toyota’s Gazoo Racing Is Working on Street Cars, Including Supra and New Lexus GS F

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Toyota’s Gazoo Racing division, previously a motorsports-focused branch of the company, is pivoting to include high-performance production cars under its new Toyota sub-brand, GR. There are several projects already in the works, including the much anticipated Toyota Supra sports car being developed in conjunction with BMW and a new Lexus GS F sports sedan. We spoke with Shigeki Tomoyama, president of Gazoo Racing, at the Tokyo auto show to hear more about Gazoo’s plans for the near future.

So far, GR’s main foray into the non-racing world is the Toyota Yaris GRMN, a homologation version of the Yaris hatchback that is tied in with Toyota’s World Rally Championship (WRC) efforts. It’s a limited-run vehicle that is only being sold in Japan and Europe, and Tomoyama has ruled it out for the United States, saying that the 209-hp supercharged hatch is too small to have any sort of broad appeal in the American sport-compact market.

Supra Specifics

2019 Toyota Supra (spy photo)

Instead, the first fruit of GR’s labor that we’re likely to see in the U.S. is the new Toyota Supra, due to be revealed sometime next year. The return of this revered sports-car nameplate has been in the news for years now, ever since Toyota entered into a partnership to develop a rear-wheel-drive sports-car platform with BMW. The Germans are further along in the process, having already shown a near-production concept version of the next-generation Z4 convertible. But the Supra, on which we’ve reported extensively, isn’t quite ready, even though it has been almost four years since Toyota showed the FT-1 concept (pictured at top), which was thought to preview its design.

What’s the holdup? Tomoyama explained that Toyota chief Akio Toyoda is personally involved in the project and that he has specific ideas about how the car should feel. The Gazoo Racing team is thus hard at work honing the Supra’s chassis tuning, with particular emphasis placed on rear-end grip. “It is important to have lots of feedback, because drivers have to know where the limit is,” Tomoyama explained. It’s also a priority for Toyota to make sure that the Supra is highly differentiated from its BMW equivalent. Tomoyama assured us that, despite sharing components with the BMW, the Supra will feel considerably different than the Z4. Given that his daily driver is a modified 1997 Toyota Supra with 600 horsepower, we’re inclined to trust Tomoyama’s car-enthusiast instincts.

Lexus GS F

2016 Lexus GS F

Gazoo Racing will also have a relationship with Lexus’s F performance division going forward. Tomayama said that GR is already involved with developing a new Lexus GS F. What’s unclear is whether he’s referring to an F variant of a next-generation GS or merely an updated version of the current GS F. Considering recent rumors that the GS will not live on to see another generation, we tend to lean toward the latter.

As with the Supra, Tomayama explained, rear-end grip is an important aspect of the new GS F’s dynamics. He said that the new car needs to be lighter to achieve the playful feel GR is aiming for. We measured the current GS F at a relatively svelte 4128 pounds (that’s 261 pounds lighter than the last Audi S6 we tested), so we’re curious to see how Lexus might achieve this goal.

What remains to be seen is how Toyota will market Gazoo Racing as an entity in the States. Tomayama said the company hasn’t decided whether or not GR-developed cars destined for the United States, like the Supra, will wear special badges. In Japan, Toyota recently launched a lineup of mildly modified GR-badged variants of existing models, but that strategy isn’t likely to be implemented in America. So don’t expect a high-performance Camry Gazoo anytime soon; GR’s initial focus in the United States will be on establishing itself as a purveyor of purpose-built sports cars like the Supra. That’s a value system that we’re happy to get behind.
2017 Tokyo Auto Show Full Coverage

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