Toyota could also be about to aim one of many strangest Frankenstein tasks in latest historical past. The corporate has begun hinting at one thing you’d have discovered comical not way back. However, in case you’ve been paying consideration, it’s much less of a stretch nowadays.
There could also be a high-performance Prius on the best way.
The proof, we admit, is slim. However it comes from a division of Toyota that likes to get playful with hints and teasers. And it’s nearly Memorial Day weekend, so we’re all feeling a bit whimsical. You’ll be able to enable us one enjoyable one.
The trace comes from Toyota Gazoo Racing – each an precise racing division and a store that builds high-performance vehicles just like the GR86 and GR Supra.
Gazoo Racing Frolics On-line When They’re As much as One thing
GR has a historical past of performing mischievous once they have one thing enjoyable up their sleeve. In 2021, they began sneaking tiny hints of an aggressively styled scorching hatch into advertisements for different Toyota vehicles. For months, the thriller automobile confirmed up within the shadows or within the distance in advertisements for the standard Corolla hatchback.
By the point the GR Corolla appeared on the market, the world was primed for the little 300-horsepower, limited-run scorching hatch.
They’re Beginning Once more
That course of could also be beginning once more. Gazoo Racing is getting ready to compete within the legendary 24 Hours of Lemans endurance race in a number of weeks. They’ve launched an internet site highlighting the drivers and prototype vehicles they’ll be working there.
On the backside is an unexplained picture. It exhibits a storage door opening on a automobile with a Gazoo Racing license plate. The license plate body signifies that this isn’t a race automobile. It’s a GR model of a manufacturing automobile.
Quad lights mounted low don’t match any present Toyota product. However the form of the decrease air dam and the situation of the tow hook covers above do. And it’s a bizarre one.
It appears to match the size of the brand new 2023 Toyota Prius.
If We’re Loopy, So Are Others
We’re not the one ones to note this.
Motor1 says, “Name us loopy, however it may simply be a 2023 Prius dressed up as a race automobile.”
CarScoops involves the identical conclusion, saying, “The higher a part of the bumper makes us assume it is perhaps a beefed-up model of the Toyota Prius.”
CarBuzz says it. AutoSpies got here to the identical conclusion. Little by little, the automotive press is coalescing round the concept that there’s a high-performance Prius on the best way.
Nobody would purchase the concept if we had been speaking in regards to the final Prius.
The 2023 Prius Is Really Type of Fast
However the 2023 Prius is a wildly completely different automobile than each Prius mannequin that got here earlier than. Our Colin Ryan, one of many first to drive it, mentioned, “The notoriously lackadaisical Prius is now faster than maybe most vehicles in its measurement/value vary.”
Our Mike Hazard, a veteran Prius proprietor, acquired a while behind the wheel and truly shouted, “wheeee!”
In base kind, the Prius now boasts 194 horsepower and an aggressive wedge form which may not look ridiculous in GR kind.
And we do count on new tasks from GR this yr. Former Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda – a well-respected semi-pro race automobile driver in addition to a enterprise chief – lately stepped down from main the corporate to concentrate on ardour tasks at GR. That is simply the sort of whimsy he’d endorse.
We’ll have to attend for greater than the bottom 4 inches of the entrance bumper to make certain. However, if Gazoo’s historical past is any information, that is simply the primary in a collection of frisky teasers earlier than we’ll know for positive.