Ballot to decide who achieves the initial allocation of the new Gazoo hotrod reprising the spirit of a controversial WRC contender.

NEW twist to the concept of some cars and vehicle brands being a gamble has been raised by Toyota New Zealand in respect to an incoming performance model.

Corolla being one of the make’s longest-lived nameplates – the first came out in the 1960s – and arguably the most easily-spotted in any street anywhere due to its massive build count of five million examples won’t stand for much with the new Gazoo Racing-fettled flagship.

The GR Corolla, which revives the type’s performance persona that conceivably has been dormant here since the GT period of the 1980s – when sports versions ran the famous 4AGE engine - stands to be among the handful of the hundreds of derivatives created over 12 generations to have genuine world-class provenance.

Though the $74,990 sticker also elevates the type’s buy-in point to a new high, Toyota New Zealand’s confidence of it being immediately covetable and, perhaps, in the long term quite collectible, is patent.

It has taken the unusual and, for the Palmerston North-domiciled distributor, unprecedented move of making the first 150 units of the specialist five-door 212kW all-wheel-drive model subject to three ballots, each of 50 units, the first next month.

 Basically, from the tenor of material shared with media, an intending buyer puts down their name – and presumably a deposit – and takes a chance of having it pulled from a hat (metaphorically if not literally).

TNZ’s announcement of this pitch does not mention of how much latitude buyers get. In distributor-availed form, the car only comes in a single, specific trim but there is a palette of colours.

Whether the cars are being built to order or if TNZ’s simply allocates a ‘winner’ an example from a pre-determined consignment, regardless of what thoughts a purchaser might have about paint hue, is not clear. It is still not clear when the car touches NZ soil, save that this will occur during 2023. It says more detail will be released closer to the first ballot. 

GR is the new performance push with genuine credibility – the GR programme associates with the brand’s works racing effort in the top-level world rally and world endurance championship.

 The latter sports car programme being headed by Palmerston North’s Brendon Hartley, who holds two WEC world titles – one with Toyota, the other with Porsche – and has won Le Mans three times (twice with Toyota, once with Porsche) would seem an obvious element to leverage GR’s promotion in NZ.  

Strangely, TNZ has not played that obvious ace card to any particular effect, instead focusing of pushing ‘Gazoo’ through its domestic single-seater and ‘86’ sports coupe championships.

GR in its full-blown format (as opposed to ‘GR Sport’, which is more a dress-up) has been here for two years and also presents with two rear-drive coupes, the Supra, a new-generation 86 that has yet to hit the national racing scene – but is expected to do so to replace the long-lived current car, which wasn’t a Gazoo project regardless that it promotes GR.

To date the big champion here has been the family’s baby, the GR Yaris, a hot rod in a four-wheel-drive generation that was primarily designed with expectation it would run in WRC. A change of strategy meant it ultimately didn’t do so.

Yaris has been the most successful, in respect to sales volume, with more than 100 delivered even though supply has been significantly hurt by coronavirus-related issues.

Supra, a co-build with BMW, has barely raised a ripple and GR 86’s promise appears to have been stifled by restricted availability. The Subaru factory (the car again being a co-development with that make) that produces it could provision just 10 to NZ last year.

Even though TNZ’s sales approach suggests GR Corolla is also a restricted count car, the allocation for 2023 is not too bad for something so specialist.

 The count is higher than it first suggested might be achievable and is conceivably enough stock to quell, at least temporarily, the potential threat of grey imports from the usual sources of Japan and the United Kingdom. Japan-market GR Yaris has already shown in NZ. 

Corolla potentially could be the top GR hit here, but in volume it could be beaten by the next GR Sport. That’s a version of the Hilux, also set to be here by year-end. Despite utes being in the bad books with Government’s Clean Car agenda, Hilux is a big name in NZ and though TNZ is committed to meeting Government’s low CO3 agenda, it might find it hard to throttle back the buyer demand for a Hilux with 165kW and 550Nm - 10 percent more grunt than the standard versions’ 2.8-litre turbodiesel makes.

The petrol GR cars also capture Clean Car fees but the Corolla looks like being better value than the Yaris. It costs just $10,000 more and is a physically larger and, thus, arguably more conveniently-sized car for all-round application. Though the cars share a common 1.6-litre three-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine with identical torque, the Corolla’s has 21kW more power and it is marginally faster.  

As with the smaller car, it is ‘old school’ in only tethering to a six-speed manual gearbox, though that’s likely to be a temporary limitation, with persistent talk that Toyota has trick DSG-style automatic in development for both cars.

Beyond it having a very potent powertrain, the car’s allure is with its look – GR having embellished the family styling with some hard-out design elements – and the GR-FOUR AWD system, which automatically distributes power from 50/50 split, up to 30/70 front and rear, with Normal, Sport and Track Modes. The model also has a widened track to enhance the handling. 

Whether Toyota Japan has a competition career in mind for GR Corolla remains to be seen; the car has been in track, but as an experimental for development of hydrogen as a fuel.

It seems unlikely to replace the Yaris in WRC, though interestingly TNZ’s general manager, Steve Prangnell, has been spurred to remind Corolla’s racing heritage has been built on gravel as well as circuit tarmac.

“While undoubtedly the Corolla is mainly known by Kiwi drivers as the supremely reliable and dependable hatch, sedan, and compact wagon, the Corolla has a heritage of competing and winning in both track and rally events.” 

Don’t be surprised if Toyota’s recall of the type’s rally heritage is set to be carefully constructed.

Corolla did make it all the way to WRC, in 1997 and 1998, but the works car - the first Corolla with four-wheel-drive and a performance engine - delivered less than it should have and is best remembered for a famous moment of frustration televised to the world.

Top driver Carlos Sainz throwing his helmet through the back window of his Corolla works car after it expired within sight of a WRC championship title stood as the biggest fail at point of success for Toyota until 2016, when its ultimately dominant WEC car was denied a Le Mans shoo-in one lap short of the finish when a cheap component quit. 

The Corolla WRC was born into controversy. The car’s development was underway in 1995, the year when Toyota Castrol Team was caught using illegal turbo restrictors on its Celica GT-Four cars during the Rally Catalunya. The team was given a one-year ban by the FIA.

Corolla delivered Toyota back in 1997, to compete with Subaru’s Impreza WRC and Ford’s Escort WRC, running with the same drivetrain as the Celica, but this time in legal form.

Development hassles kept the car out of the first rounds, but it gradually came up to pace, with Toyota’s confidence bolstered when it achieved a Rally Australia podium in 1997.

In 1998, Sainz joined Toyota. The Spaniard won on debut, in Rally Monte Carlo, and again in New Zealand, while French team-mate Didier Auriol secured Catalunya.

With his wins and five more podiums, Sainz came to the last round of the championship, Rally Great Britain, as the second-placed driver in the overall standings, two points behind Mitsubishi’s top hope, Tommi Makinen.

But then what’s been called “probably biggest ever drama in WRC history” happened.  

Makinen retired early, after an accident on the first day. Sainz was running comfortably fourth on the last special stage, his third championship title seemingly impossible to lose.

And yet, lose it he did, when the Corolla stalled and refused to restart about 300 metres from the finish line. Makinen became a champion instead, for the third time in his career. You can see it all on the video above.