New Toyota GR HiLux racer off and running

Toyota is gearing up for another tilt at the gruelling Dakar Rally in January 2021 with a new-look GR HiLux race machine that more closely aligns with the updated model now in showrooms.

Australia’s top-selling vehicle for the past four years, the Toyota HiLux is almost certain to leverage its motorsport success – including victory in the Dakar Rally – by developing a hard-core Ford Ranger Raptor rival.

Toyota has already trademarked the GR HiLux name in Australia, and just like Toyota Gazoo Racing’s (GR) World Rally Championship exploits and the subsequent smash-hit new GR Yaris production model, Toyota’s successful Dakar-winning HiLux would provide the inspiration for a road-legal GR ute.

Expected to be powered by a development of the upcoming Toyota LandCruiser 300 Series’ new V6 turbo-diesel engine, the new GR HiLux is set to be deployed around 2024, when the next-generation pick-up truck arrives.

Toyota already has a locally-developed HiLux tough truck in the form of the circa-$70,000 Rugged X, but it doesn’t have the bespoke suspension and off-road prowess of the Ranger Raptor.

The Japanese car giant is continuing to invest in the HiLux ute’s motorsport program with a revamped look that sees the desert dueller fitted with the same headlights and a similar look to the facelifted HiLux, which went on sale in August 2020.

But the motorsport version eschews the HiLux’s top-spec 2.8-litre turbo-diesel engine (150kW/500Nm) for a mid-mounted 5.0-litre petrol V8.

Having been on or close to the podium in the past nine events, the HiLux scored its maiden win in the challenging and often deadly Dakar Rally in 2019, at the hands of driver Nasser Al-Attiyah and navigator Mathieu Baumel. In 2020, the HiLux finished second.

Toyota will field a four-vehicle team in 2021, and while the fundamentals of the rally-prepped GR HiLux remain unchanged, Gazoo Racing has made “refinements” to the normally-aspirated V8 engine and suspension.

Toyota’s product engineering team is expected to evaluate telemetry to decipher which elements and characteristics of the racing version could be applied to a road-going GR HiLux.

Toyota currently sells two GR vehicles in Australia, the Supra and Yaris, with the next model tipped to be a the GR Corolla hot hatch.

The Japanese brand hasn’t ruled out expanding its GR product portfolio further, with a GR LandCruiser 4x4 also in the frame.

The 2021 edition of the Dakar Rally kicks off in Jeddah on January 3 and will take place solely in Saudi Arabia.