How will Supercars help Toyota sell RAV4s? 

While Toyota Australia’s stated objective upon entering the Supercars Championship in 2026 is to promote its Gazoo Racing brand, the truth is that the whole company needs to benefit from the weight of the marketing spend that will be funnelled into both on- and off-track activities. 

Four of the top ten best-selling cars in Australia are currently Toyotas, including the RAV4. So carsales asked Toyota Australia boss Sean Hanley directly… how will Supercars sell RAV4s? 

Hanley explained that the wider Gazoo Racing, or GR, brand was front-of-mind when it came to preparing its Supercars campaign.  

“When we went into this, we knew that the GR brand would expand over the next decade quite substantially. We're already seeing that with some of the cars and I expect you'll see that again over the next decade. So Gazoo Racing and the brand was always our primary objective here,” he told carsales.

“Of course, technologies will evolve as time goes on, but we wanted to showcase that Toyota could actually put a performance car and a performance brand out there.” 

The GR sub-brand already incorporates cars like the GR86, GR Corolla and GR Yaris, and Hanley says the sub-brand is designed to show that Toyota is still capable of producing exciting cars. 

“Well, who's to say we won't have a GR RAV4 in the future?” he mused.  

“Who's to say we won't have GR variants of whatever models in the future? We wanted to cater for what is a definite performance car market in Australia that despite popular opinion, despite EVs and everything else is not actually going away.”

More details on the next-gen RAV4 GR Sport were recently revealed and is set to land here in the first half of 2026. The GR Supra Supercar, meanwhile, hits the track in February. 

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