The GR Corolla has been revealed in full - and it's coming here

Friday, 1 April 2022

This awesome little weapon is the GR Corolla – and it’s coming here.

If you’d asked us last week about the high-performance GR Corolla, we would have said it’s very awesome, but we’ll never see it here, because it’s essentially North America’s GR Yaris equivalent. However, we would be wrong, as Toyota NZ has confirmed the hot Corolla will be coming here in 2023.

That’s very good news, partly because more fast Toyotas is never a bad thing, but also because the GR Corolla isn’t just a four-door GR Yaris set to fight Golf GTIs, it gets an uprated engine to take on the Golf Rs and Civic Type Rs of the world.

The Toyota GR Yaris is the 2021 Stuff Top Car for fun.

It’s the same 1.6-litre turbo triple, now spitting out 224kW/370Nm, which should make the GR Corolla a proper little rocket. Toyota has once again paired it with a six-speed manual with automatic rev matching, with no mention of any automatic option, despite rumours of an eight-speed auto making its debut.

Also coming from the GR Yaris is its permanent all-wheel drive system. The Corolla has separate controls for the drive force distribution and the steering/throttle response, to allow greater freedom of choice for the driver. Basically, its more of a road-going hot hatch than the racecar-with-lights approach of the GR Yaris.

**READ MORE:

That’s one exhaust per cylinder. Probably.

* Toyota officially teases high-performance GR Corolla

* Top Car for fun: Toyota GR Yaris

As cool as the car above looks, this version without all the aero bits looks even better.

* First drive review: Seat and Cupra Leon

Supporting the car isn’t a rehash of the Frankenstein GR Yaris platform, which melds the front half of a conventional Yaris with the back end of a conventional Corolla along with some special suspension.

Instead, Toyota has used the entire TNGA-C platform from the Corolla, giving it MacPherson struts up front and double wishbone rear suspension to improve handling.

Rounding out its performance credentials the GR Corolla will feature beefed-up brakes and Torsen limited slip differential on the front and rear like the GR Yaris.

It looks mean as well, with an aggressive, widened stance, bonnet vents, huge front grille, rear spoiler, and a Civic Type R-mocking triple exhaust set-up. Interestingly, the photos also show versions without the spoiler, bonnet vents, and what seems like a slightly less outrageous body kit. Nothing was mentioned in the press release, but perhaps there will be an optional aero kit available?

“This is the car that a lot of people have been waiting for,” said Neeraj Lala, CEO of Toyota NZ. “The addition of the GR Corolla just goes to show we are going to continue to offer a vehicle for all customer needs as we move towards electrification.”

The final piece of the puzzle is price. It will sit somewhere between the $59,990 GR Yaris and the $99,290 GR Supra, but how far it leans toward either end is yet to be confirmed. The about-to-be-replaced VW Golf R asks $78k, while the Cupra Leon hatch is more of a bargain at $62,990.

We’d expect (or, probably more accurately, hope) the GR Corolla to thread the needle between the two, hopefully landing on the nicer side of $70,000.