Tommi Gun

THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL THREE-POT. ALL-WHEEL DRIVE. FETTLED BY FOUR-TIME WRC CHAMP TOMMI MAKINEN. TOYOTA’S GR YARIS IS PACKING SOME SERIOUS HEAT

- Scott Newman

THE DEVELOPMENT of any new car is a constant battle between the engineers and the accountants. Generally, the former want to spend the money and the latter want to save it. In creating the Toyota GR Yaris, the engineers definitely had the upper hand. This is a baby hot hatch with a carbon roof, aluminum panels, monster brakes, and a bespoke engine and all-wheel-drive system.

Toyota has pushed all its chips in, and with good reason, for the GR Yaris is the basis for its next World Rally Car, set to debut in 2021. More importantly, it’s the first all-new, purely Toyota performance car since the 2001 Corolla Sportivo, if you’re feeling charitable, or the 1994 ST205 Celica GT-Four if you’re being realistic. No joint ventures here. There’s a significant amount of pride at stake, the engineering team keen to prove it can produce a world-beating hot hatch.

There were hurdles, the largest of which was Toyota’s recent paucity of exciting machinery leading to a lack of knowledge within the company on how to proceed. “When I started to develop this car, no-one knows how to make a sports four-wheel-drive system,” says chief engineer Naohiko Saito. “So we went to the Toyota technical library and we found articles from 20 years ago.”

Saito and his team were also in the fortunate position of being able to call upon someone within the Toyota family with extensive knowledge of all-wheel drive: four-time World Rally Champion Tommi Makinen. Makinen is now the team boss at Toyota Gazoo Racing, whose Yaris powered Estonian driver Ott Tanak to the 2019 title. “We learn so many new things from Tommi Makinen Racing,” says Saito.

The GR Yaris, scheduled for an Australian arrival late this year, is positioned at the top of the new-generation Yaris range that will launch locally within five months.