Speaking on Toyota’s multi-fuel strategy and continuing with petrol-powered enthusiast cars while other brands shift to EV performance cars, Toyoda also said: “If they say to me ‘hey you’re too late’ you should’ve shifted to BEV, well we are people who love cars and those people and myself fight even within the companies.”
“If I only have to make a good balance sheet or profitable things, or only have to make carbon neutral, it’s not exciting.” said the Toyota boss.
Toyoda was speaking at round three of the Super Taikyu endurance series last weekend, held at Fuji Speedway. He’s been central to Toyota’s development of its Gazoo Racing brand, which continues to utilise motorsport to develop road cars like the GR Yaris, GR GT and even a new mid-engined sports car. During development of GR Yaris, Toyoda explained: “I stayed in the training centre, everyday I drove it, everyday I broke it and everyday he fixed it”, pointing towards Naohiko Saito, the chief engineer of GR Yaris.
The Fuji round of the Super Taikyu series saw the Concept M – the GR Yaris testbed for Toyota’s new mid-engined car, complete 473 laps, coming fourth in its class. Within the same race Toyota also ran a hydrogen-powered GR Yaris, partly driven by Toyoda himself – securing 10 more laps than the Concept M.
The Toyota GR Yaris hot hatch has become a hugely sought-after car for Toyota with 60,000 sold globally. Despite it only coming to the UK in limited numbers, there are plenty of appealing used examples of the GR Yaris available on the Buy A Car service now with prices starting under £25,000.
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