How the demands of the rally team set the style for the GR Yaris

The brief Saito and his team were given when the project began around three years ago was to produce a performance car that would boost the image of the new Yaris, could compete in national rallies and would help with the homologation of the 2021 Yaris WRC.

Those three demands can be seen in the design of the GR Yaris. It looks like a regular Yaris that has spent several months gulping down protein shakes. It shares a few things in common with the forthcoming new Yaris: it’s built on the same basic platform and has the same wheelbase. But the upper body is all new and the differences are easy to spot: it has three doors whereas the standard Yaris is five-door only, the roof is substantially lower at the rear louvre and the rear features a notably wider track, with big, beefy wheel arches.

Those changes are to aid the design of the next Yaris WRC, due to rules that bodywork must closely follow that of a production car. The rally team gave Saito “many difficult requests”, principally regarding the car’s aerodynamics, weight and strength. Saito then had to battle to gain approval for those changes – and it wasn’t easy, given that Toyota is still essentially a high-volume producer of mass-market cars. “When we asked for three doors, everyone disagreed, because it meant a new body,” he says. “We had to fight for it, but we finally got it.”

Saving weight was a key consideration, Sato channelling his inner Colin Chapman during the development process. He proudly notes that you can flex the bumper by pushing it with one finger. (I tried. You can.) “That caused much discussion,” he says, “because if you can flex it, customers might think it’s cheap – but to have a lighter body, customers will accept it.”

Given the number of arguments Saito won and the divergence from a standard Yaris, you sense this wasn’t a cheap car to develop. “I would say it’s not a bean-counter car,” he says, laughing.

Under the bonnet of the GR Yaris

There are more changes under that lightweight bodywork, most notably the three-cylinder 1.6-litre turbocharged engine under the bonnet. It’s used both because it’s the biggest that will fit the car and because Saito felt that the 2.0-litre turbos he tried in various benchmark rivals (particularly a Subaru WRX STI) were all too heavy.