SPY PICS: New Toyota Yaris to spawn GR hot hatch

The sight of a new Toyota Yaris cutting hot laps on the Nurburgring is the clearest sign yet that a new pocket rocket is coming soon from GAZOO Racing.

If everything runs to plan, the turbocharged all-wheel drive hot hatch could be on the road in Australia during the back half of next year.

Toyota’s performance division has also hinted that it is waving a magic wand over the HiLux workhorse at some time in the future.

If everything happens as intended, Toyota might finally make good on the promise made by Sean Hanley -- vice-president of sales and marketing at Toyota Australia -- nearly two years ago at the 2017 Tokyo motor show.

Hanley promised big things then for the GR sub-brand, which will be launched in Australia later this year with the new Toyota Supra and will be applied to just about everything in the Japanese brand’s model line-up – from the Yaris and Corolla hatchbacks to the 86 coupe and HiLux, and perhaps even its huge SUV range.

Toyota Australia’s GR action started this year with GAZOO Racing colours appearing on the Yaris rally cars fielded by Neal Bates in the Australian Rally Championship for his sons Harry and Lewis.

But GAZOO Racing has a much tougher task in creating a genuine performance sub-brand for Toyota, as part of a mission statement direct from company chief Akio Toyoda.

GR began as his first off-the-books foray into performance motoring and has since become the spearhead for all Toyota’s competition activities including the World Rally Championship and Le Mans sports car racing in the World Endurance Championship.

And just as the WRC will spawn the first global Yaris hot hatch, the WEC will breed Toyota’s first hypercar.

The road-going Yaris will be nowhere near as radical as the WRC car, but it will be the first go-faster all-wheel drive Toyota since the Celica GT-Four that sold strongly in Australia. It is also likely to deliver more than 200kW of turbocharged power.

Carsales recently drove the first-generation GR Yaris in Europe, but it is only a mildly supercharged model with front-wheel drive, and only 400 were built for Europe with a price tag that would translate to around $48,000.

European sources are hinting strongly that the upcoming GR Yaris will have a minimum of 180kW – enough to give it a 0-100km/h sprint time in the five-second range.

The new GR Yaris – based on the standard hatch pictured here and due on sale Down Under in 2020 -- should also be built in Japan, which will mean better quality and a target price in Australia much closer to $30,000.

That would make it Toyota’s first direct rival for pint-size hot hatches like the Ford Fiesta ST, Peugeot 208 GTi, Renault Clio RS and Volkswagen Polo GTI.

On the HiLux front, GAZOO Racing president Shigeki Tomoyama recently hinted about transferring the expertise from Toyota’s successful Dakar racing program into a road car.

“I hope both … a racing HiLux and a customer commercial product,” he said, adding fuel to comments by Hanley, who has long been keen for a fully fledged rival for the Ford Ranger Raptor.

It’s only speculation for the moment, but the father of the Toyota 86 and Supra could be set for a bigger role with GAZOO Racing.

Tetsuya Tada, who has been a regular visitor to Australia, told carsales recently that he was moving into a new role and that he had finished his time overseeing the flying car that Toyota will showcase during the opening ceremony for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

He refused to comment on his next task but has been one of Toyota’s key executives and signed-off his most recent project by cutting hot laps at Le Mans in the Supra.