This is the Toyota GR Yaris M Concept, and the first thing you need to know about it is it will compete in the Super Taikyu endurance racing series. The second thing is that unlike a regular GR Yaris, the M Concept doesn’t have an engine under its front bonnet.
Opening the tailgate, you’ll find the engine now sits behind the rear seats to create a midship layout as opposed to a front-engine one, but it isn’t the G16E-GTS 1.6 litre turbocharged inline-three petrol unit found in the standard car.
Instead, this is a new 2.0 litre turbocharged inline-four petrol engine that Toyota is currently developing but isn’t providing much in the way of technical details. The only thing we’re being told is that through the highly demanding world of endurance racing, engineers will repeatedly “break and fix” the car (and its engine) as part of the development process.
Toyota says this is part of its “driver-first” approach to car making that takes into account feedback from Morizo (that’s Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda’s racing pseudonym), professional drivers and gentleman drivers.
Long-time Toyota fans will find the idea of the GR Yaris M Concept to be a familiar one, as the company did something similar back in 2008 when it unveiled the Aygo Crazy. Nicknamed the “shopping supercar,” the one-off concept was based on the Aygo city car and had its small-displacement engine ripped out and replaced with a larger 1.8 litre VVT-i unit.
A turbo kit was added to boost power and the engine was rear-mounted, with drive going to the rear wheels via a five-speed manual transmission. In its stock form, the 1ZZ-FE engine (minus the turbo) powered the final generation of the Celica and MR2.
On the mention of the MR2, it has been heavily rumoured for some time that Toyota plans to revive the iconic nameplate. In fact, the company even hinted last year at the MR2’s return to the line-up in its promotional anime series, although there has been no official word just yet.
While the reveal of the M Concept may be looked at as Toyota’s attempt at creating a “Crazy” version of the GR Yaris, it could very well be a test mule for the MR2 revival. It was previously reported that the fourth-generation MR2 would get an all-new 2.0 litre turbocharged engine developed in partnership with Subaru and Mazda, with a target of 400 PS (395 hp or 294 kW) and 550 Nm of torque.
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