Toyota — the world’s largest automaker — is famous for many things. It produces some of America’s best-selling vehicles. It recently won our Most Trusted Brand Award for 2023 thanks to its legendary reliability and lineup of well-rounded family cars and SUVs. It took home Best Brand in our 2023 Lowest 5-Year Cost to Own Awards. Its Lexus luxury brand won the same award in the luxury category.
But few Americans look to Toyota as an icon of great performance cars.
However, some of the brand’s current projects could make it the unlikely savior of the performance car as the electric age arrives.
The Manual Hybrid and the Manual EV
The Venn diagram of people who love performance cars and people who love stick shifts isn’t quite a circle. But there’s a lot of overlap.
Manuals were once the province of people looking to save money on a new car. But they have faded from the market as automatic and continuously variable transmissions have come down in price and increased in efficiency.
Today, they’re more likely to be found on performance cars than bargain-basement models.
The rise of electric vehicles (EVs) and their Goldilocks half-gas cousins, plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), also threaten the manual. EVs lack transmissions altogether, and every hybrid and PHEV currently on the market uses some form of automatic transmission.
Toyota, however, recently applied for a patent for a performance-oriented manual transmission for hybrid and PHEV cars. In its patent application, The Drive website reports that Toyota “says it knows what enthusiasts prefer, and as such, what it lays out is not a ‘clutch-by-wire’ system, which disconnects the clutch pedal mechanically from the actual hydraulic clutch actuation system.”
That would allow for the three-pedal operation of a hybrid or PHEV.
Lexus, meanwhile, has a manual transmission for electric cars in testing.
More GR Models
Toyota may not give up on gas-powered performance models, either.
These days, Toyota’s race-inspired performance cars appear under the GR banner. Short for Gazoo Racing, GR is Toyota’s motorsports division. It competes in racing series on several continents and oversees the development of performance cars meant for the road.
The Current GR lineup includes the GR Supra, GR86, and GR Corolla in the U.S., as well as a GR Yaris overseas.
Persistent rumors in recent years had said the brand was threatened. But new Toyota CEO Koji Sato recently breathed new life into the division.
“The Gazoo brand will be acknowledged for the future — and maybe we can even speed it up,” Sato told the U.K.’s Autocar last week.
An In-House Freelance Race Car Developer?
Sato recently took over the role of president and CEO after Akio Toyoda, grandson of the company’s founder, took a step back. Toyoda remains as chairman of the board but has asked Sato to take over the day-to-day reins of the company.
That’s an interesting development for car enthusiasts because Toyoda is a unique figure. He’s not just a corporate leader. He’s a respected race car driver. Toyoda was directly involved in the development of most of the GR cars sold today. He has had a respectable career near the higher levels of international racing under his driving alter-ego, Morizo.
Sato told Autocar that Toyoda, freed from running the company day-to-day, may now have more time to lead passion projects for GR. “Our Master Driver was also president of the company at the same time as he had a steering wheel in his hand for Gazoo. Now [that] he is only chairman, maybe he will have a lot more time to develop cars for them,” he said.
The larger Toyota brand is focused on transitioning to electric cars and building on its massive lead in hybrid car sales.
But, reading between the lines, the company is also hinting at a re-energized GR division and an effort to build electric cars and hybrids that car enthusiasts can love.
