Toyota Seeks to Boost Its Brand by Launching New Sports Car

Toyota, whose vehicles are seen as reliable but also uniform, is changing its image as Toyota Motor Corp. released its new sports car, the GR Yaris, earlier in September.

Toyota Seeks to Boost Its Brand by Launching New Sports Car

The GR Yaris is Toyota’s first attempt at making a production vehicle based on a rally car. Toyota Motor President Akio Toyoda expressed his confidence in its performance at an online event to celebrate its launch on Wednesday.

“It has crossed the boundaries between production, development, sales, and motorsports,” he said. “I have no doubt it will have a huge impact on Toyota’s manufacturing going forward.”

The GR Yaris is a sports car that was developed by collecting information about the cars in the World Rally Championship. The newly developed engine is compact and lightweight, yet delivers a powerful driving performance. The last time Toyota sold a sports car with four-wheel drive was about 20 years ago when it stopped production on the Celica GT-Four.

In recent years, Toyota has been working to revive its line of sports cars. As the cars demand higher performance compared to the average vehicle, it enhances technology standards, which then raises the comfort and drive performance of a regular car. In 2017, the company launched the GR model, which is its line of sports cars.

Toyota’s recent sports cars were the Toyota 86, which was released in 2012 and was jointly developed with Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., now Subaru Corp., and the Supra, which was released in 2019 and was jointly developed with BMW. The GR Yaris was solely developed by Toyota.

“We had always wanted a sports car that we built ourselves,” Toyoda said.

Toyoda test drove the vehicle himself to make the final checks on the car before sending it to the market.

The president garnered a lot of attention after winning the 24-hour endurance race at the Fuji International Speedway earlier this month.

■ Dedicated production line

The GR Yaris is assembled at the Motomachi Plant in Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, where a new dedicated assembly line has been created, bringing in skilled workers from all over the company.

Performance is an important factor, so the company has deliberately increased the amount of work that is done by hand compared to other mass-produced vehicles, according to a senior official.

In motorsports, profitability is often neglected, but Toyoda said he had told the plant managers “to make sure we stay in the black.” The plant managers had also made sure that the Toyota Production System (TPS) was thoroughly implemented in the production line, aiming to improve efficiency. Thus, the GR Yaris was sold as a production vehicle.

The price for the GR Yaris ranges from ¥2.65 million to ¥4.56 million. It’s more expensive than the standard Yaris, which starts at around ¥1.4 million, but as of Aug. 31, even before the car was released, there were about 5,000 preorders for the GR Yaris against a monthly sales target of 1,100.

“If this unique style of manufacturing spreads to other production vehicles, it will help create an entirely new image for Toyota,” an analyst said.

“Up until now, our vehicles under the Toyota and Lexus brands have been very standard,” Toyoda said. “From now on, I believe it is my mission to create cars that will surprise and delight people and make them think, ‘Is this the same company?