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Rumors of the GR Corolla have been circulating the Internet for almost four years, but it was only today that Toyota would give its compact hatchback the Gazoo Racing treatment. Oddly enough, the company has refrained from revealing the identity of the car, but that flash-and-you-will-miss-teaser has suggested it will be related to the wildly popular Corolla.
The “Toyota Performance Product Reveal” happened tonight when everyone was expecting to see Japan’s answer to the Volkswagen Golf R. Just like the hot hatch from Wolfsburg, the GR Corolla will have all-wheel drive judging by the adjacent “GR-Four” script. This isn’t the brand’s only AWD performance hatch as the non-American GR Yaris has been around for quite some time.
By the way, the feisty supermini can share its beefy three-cylinder engine with its bigger sibling. It has been widely reported that the GR Corolla will inherit the 1.6 liter turbocharged petrol engine from the GR Yaris. The subcompact hatchback offered 268 horsepower in Japan while the European version had to settle for 257 horsepower.
An educated guess tells us that the Toyota GR Corolla 2023 will be just as powerful, even more powerful because it’s a bigger car and therefore heavier. Much like its brother, we expect a six-speed manual to channel all that power to both axles. On a related note, an eight-speed automatic transmission is currently in the works for the GR Yaris. However, it is too early to say whether it will eventually be adopted by the GR Corolla as well.
Expect massive amounts of torque considering the GR Yaris already packs 266 pound-feet (360 Newton-meters) on the Old Continent. Just like horsepower, Toyota engineers were able to tweak the three pots to extract more torque to match the added weight of the GR Corolla. In fact, the JDM-spec GR Yaris has not only more horsepower than its Euro counterpart, but also slightly more torque, at 273 lb-ft (370 Nm).
The GR Corolla will join a growing lineup of sports cars that also includes the GRMN Yaris. A hotter Supra is likely just a matter of time and rumors have it that the BMW Z4 sibling car will finally get a manual gearbox.
Of course, the crown jewel of the Gazoo Racing portfolio is the 1,000-horsepower GR Super Sport hypercar, so long as that’s still the case…
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