*NOW UPDATED with video. Toyota is coming back to the World Rally Championship in 2017 after 18 years away.
[Not a valid template]After last competing in 1999, Toyota is returning to the World Rally Championship for 2017. Sadly the days of the awesome Celica GT-Four are behind us, but the Japanese manufacturer has a new Yaris WRC car designed and built at Toyota Motorsport in Cologne, Germany.
The next two years will be spent testing the Yaris WRC before Toyota returns to the series in which it won four drivers’ and three manufacturers’ world championships in the 1990s.
The Yaris WRC is a big step on from the ubiquitous rental cars that share its name. This one has a turbocharged, 1.6-litre engine with more than 300bhp, and has a very advanced chassis to cope with the challenges that rallying will throw at it.
It’ll be great to see Toyota back in WRC, but it leads us to another, more exciting question – could we see a lightweight, stupidly powerful sporty Yaris developed for the road? Come on Toyota, you know it makes sense.
Source – Toyota Europe
