It’s rare that I’m sufficiently moved by a road car that I just have to write about it. It happened last week. I mean… have you seen the Toyota GR Yaris Morizo RR?
When the first GR Yaris rolled out of the Toyota City factory in September 2020, rally fans couldn’t believe their luck. Until they tried to buy one. Sold out. Everywhere. Production was ramped up (and up and up), but the waiting list still topped a year at the height of demand.
Then came the 2024 facelift, delivering an eight-speed semi-auto gearbox via a very workable paddle shift and around 10% more power. More sales. More demand.
Just when we thought it couldn’t get any better. Last week happened.
Good luck getting one of these. You need a winning lottery ticket (literally) if you're in Japan
It’s the natural evolution of things really. Evolution being the right word where Mitsubishi was concerned. A long line of Lancers kept getting better and better until X marked the end of the line.
Personally, I was more of a Subaru man. Back in the day, the office stopped when the day was interrupted by the arrival of an Impreza. I knew it was coming, but I couldn’t focus on anything but the window. And it was coming with those three letters: S, T and I. A few years later, the letters W, R and X were even more important. But after a while, not even that was enough.
In 1998, Subaru’s third successive world title was celebrated with the 22B, with the awesome P1 landing a couple of years later. Favourite for me? Has to be the 22B. Yes, the P1 is newer and shinier, but the 22B just looked like a pukka World Rally Car for the road. Fancy one today? Then be prepared to pay well north of a quarter of a million dollars.
For me, the GR Yaris Morizo RR is the new 22B. It’s that good. Everything works.
Bright yellow calipers on a Yaris? Sounds mad. It is mad. But it's mad in all the right ways
Just as Subaru made that shade of blue its own, so nothing can come close to the cool of Toyota’s shade known as Khaki Gravel. Yellow brake calipers? On anything else, not a hope. On this thing? They wouldn’t work in any other colour. And that boxy, black rear wing adds yet more discrete menace as well as added downforce to the thing.On the aero front, there are skirts and a new spoiler on the nose. Dive inside and the yellow-stitched wheel comes with a bunch of switches which spell road-going rally car. In terms of pace enhancement, there’s a carbon-fibre bonnet to match the roof and suspension settings dialled down from Akio Toyoda’s time driving a Toyota Gazoo Rookie Racing GR Yaris at last year’s 24-hour Nürburgring race. The Direct Automatic Transmission (DAT) tested throughout last year’s day-long German classic is also deployed.
The coolest bit? (I know, all of that and we haven’t even got to the coolest bit yet) It’s the push button ‘Morizo’ setting. Fittingly, this replaces the 50:50 torque split ‘gravel’ option – let’s face it, that’s the one we all deploy within minutes of settling down behind the wheel.
The only downside in the whole Toyota GR Yaris Morizo RR story? Only 200 will be built: half for Japan and half for Europe.
Much as I love the car, I love this story as well. Toyoda is, of course, Toyota Motor Corporation chairman. But in this instance, perhaps even more importantly, he’s the master driver and following very much in the wheel tracks of one of the firm’s original master drivers, Hiromu Naruse.
Naruse was instrumental in Toyoda’s evolution to becoming Morizo and there’s little doubt that influence can also be felt in one of the finest competition-derived road cars ever.
