The truth that the 2023 Toyota GR Corolla exists in any respect is something of a minor miracle. As the tale goes, a few madmen named Morizo has been stomping around Toyota’s global headquarters, disturbing that its Gazoo Racing department expand, build, and associate with a chain of impractical and amazing sports activities automobiles.
To the satisfaction of automobile fans the sector over, he is been getting his way. There are GR-engineered variations of the Supra, 86, Yaris, and now the Corolla. What will Morizo-can think about next? We can not wait to see. GR Camry, absolutely everyone? He wouldn’t. Or could he?
It enables whilst you are the person together along with your call at the building, as Morizo’s the modify ego of none apart from Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda himself. You should deliver it as much as the person: He likes to power, he races, and he regularly tells his engineers to move returned to the drafting board if he does not suppose an automobile is right enough, as he reportedly did with the GR Corolla. (He additionally had the crew expand a good higher-overall performance, Morizo Edition model, due to the route he did.)
How has all that greater improvement in paintings paid off? We’ve been ready patiently to get the GR Corolla out to the check song to discover, waiting for a while what the anime-styled warm hatch may want to accomplish with its 300-hp, 1.6-liter rapid inline three-cylinder engine, and six-velocity guide transmission.
This is not a few half-baked, the front-power wild child, either. The GR Corolla comes with all-wheel power offering the front and rear Torsen restricted-slip differentials and a driver-adjustable front-to-rear torque break-up setup that could shove as a lot as 70 percent of to-be-had torque to the returned end. It stocks a lot of its mechanicals with the GR Yaris, which turned into constructed mainly as a homologation unique for Toyota’s World Rally Championship race automobile. This is a significantly properly-crafted warm hatch.
GR Corolla In A Straight Line: Good, But Not Its Bag
Although straight-line overall performance is not this automobile’s cause for being (Toyota’s press preview power turned into restricted to song driving), the GR Corolla remains surprisingly quick. Our check squad recorded a 0-60-mph time of 5. four seconds, which is numerous ticks off Toyota’s producer estimate of “four. ninety-nine seconds.” The crew chalked up the distinction to multiple factors, approximately which you may examine greater of their breakdown of the numbers. The area mile arrived in 13.7 seconds at 101.2 mph.
“You can simply hit 60 mph with one shift if you are inclined to destroy into the rev limiter,” trying out director Eric Tingwall said. “But if you are trying to move past that velocity, you may grow to be transferring earlier.”
For a few contexts, we have got accrued a smorgasbord of 0-60 and area-mile instances we recorded from its tangential and direct competition, each inner and external, consisting of the 2021 Supra 2.0 (four. eight sec/13.four sec at 103.1 mph); 2022 Toyota 86 (5. eight sec/14.three sec at 98.7 mph); 2022 Volkswagen Golf R (four.2 sec/12.eight sec at 108.7 mph); 2021 Hyundai Veloster N (5.1 sec/13.7 sec at 102. nine mph); 2022 Hyundai Kona N (5. three sec/13.nine sec at 101.1 mph); and the 2021 Honda Civic Type R (5. three sec/13.7 sec at 107. eight mph). The GR Corolla runs kind of mid-% with this group, even though it scooted thru the area with the quality of the quick of the Golf R, which ruled from a stoplight drag standpoint.
But as we have got pointed out, the GR Corolla is not that sort of automobile. Throw a GR motorsports livery on it, and you would swear you can roll properly onto the Acropolis Rally route and begin hucking it off big jumps. It’s all angles and bulges and scoops and inlets, and get this: They’re all functional. It’s additionally funky-searching and now no longer for everyone. Some will make a laugh at its quirky, herky-jerky looks; others will deem it a mini imply machine. Choose your side.
Showing Off Its Feistier Side
When it involves our dynamic measurements, the check crew selected to reward the GR Corolla for what it turned into able to do. “In song mode with balance off, it is without a doubt feisty and has a facet to it,” avenue check editor Chris Walton said.
“Yes, you need to rev it to get the overall performance out of it, however, it is without a doubt enthusiastic and capable.”
How capable? Out at the skidpad, its 0. ninety-four g common variety brings up the rear of the grouping of automobiles we referenced above (it suits the Kona N and Golf R; all different automobiles beat them). The track turned into a lot the identical round our MotorTrend determine eight, in which its 25.0-2nd at 0. seventy-five g (avg) time simply slightly bested the Kona N (25.1 sec at 0. seventy-three g) and trailed each different automobile.
Despite now no longer being a global-beating warm hatch from a coping with standpoint, Walton suggested the GR Corolla turned into “very crisp and trustworthy” at some point of his at-the-restrict trying out. “Its mindset at the skidpad turned into by and large impartial with a whiff of understeer, and I may want to pin the throttle properly earlier than they go out to permit the front wheels to seize a few asphalt and factor it,” he said.
In the preventing energy department, the GR Corolla’s 60-0-mph braking variety of a hundred and ten ft turned into additionally close to the return of the bus, with most effective the 2 Hyundai automobiles taking longer to stop. That did not maintain the check crew from praising its brakes, even though, they suggested being powerful, consistent, and clean to modulate.
Living With It
Although we have not had a ton of seat time withinside the GR Corolla out of doors of our trying-out facility, we were capable of figure multiple things. It’s small, so do not assume it to swallow up lots of tools or haul masses of humans, even though the rear seat is not a complete penalty container for absolutely everyone sitting returned there for a prolonged time.
The check crew had an excessive reward for the automobile’s six-velocity guide transmission—the most effective gearbox to be had—and indeed, the grasp is simple to apply and the transmission programming consists of one of the higher rev-matching capabilities we have got encountered. In the cockpit, the GR packs the contemporary Corolla tech, consisting of eight.0-inch infotainment screen. But the actual grasp of ceremonies is the 12. three-inch tool panel with unique GR touches consisting of a start-up animation plus AWD mode, rapid pressure, and shift indicators.
The cool issue of the tool panel could not pretty mask the truth, even though, that withinside the end, that is nevertheless a Corolla in lots of respects, and as such, there are several regions withinside the cabin in which you begin to marvel if that is an indoors worth of an automobile that begins offevolved close to—and may exceed—$40,000. And whilst it is quite obvious, it bears stating that this isn’t the sort of automobile you may need to take long journeys in.
That all being said, if ever there has been an “it issue” automobile, the GR Corolla is it. This hatchback might not wow you with numbers or it’s indoors or slick excessive style. Instead, it is an expertly engineered sports activities hatch that Morizo-san wanted. And what Morizo wants, he gets. We’re all higher off for him being in fee of Toyota, and the automobiles that his employer builds just like the GR Corolla. Now in which’s that GR Camry already?