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“No plans at this stage for that car, the GR Corolla”.
If you and I were hoping to see a Toyota Corolla GRMN to challenge the Volkswagen Golf GTI and Hyundai i30 N, we are in for a huge disappointment as a new report by motoring.com.au states that Toyota has no plans to build it.
According to Toyota Australia’s VP of sales and marking Sean Hanley, talk of a highly-anticipated rival for the Volkswagen Golf GTI and Hyundai i30 N from Toyota has been premature.
“No plans at this stage for that car, the GR Corolla,” Hanley told carsales.com.au.
Despite the Corolla being the world’s best-selling car and competing in a bigger market segment with more buyers, it appears as though Toyota’s high-performance division, GR (Gazoo Racing), is focussed only on the Supra and Yaris at this stage.
“I’m on record as saying that Australia and Australian consumers are very open to performance cars. So I do see a big opportunity for GR in Australia, but it has to be at the appropriate time and it has to be the appropriate product,” said Hanley.
“So we would never rule it out, but we don’t have any announcements to make on Corolla GR,” said the Toyota boss.
We sampled the Yaris GRMN last year and it really left us impressed in so many ways. Toyota built only 400 units globally and only three were in South Africa for marketing purposes.
It packs a nippy 2ZR-FE 1.8-litre, four-cylinder, 16V supercharged engine tuned to produce 156 kW and 250 Nm and weighs in at only 1 135 kg.
For the record, the Gazoo Racing (GR) brand is set to be rolled out to local Toyota dealerships as a proper performance offering.
There are four different levels:
- GR-Line: cosmetic package
- GR-Sport: suspension package
- GR: power package
- GRMN: high-power package
