Lost In Traffic

On the continuing topics of rallying, we're gonna talk about one of the most successful teams from Japan (technically not Japan but let's just let it slide as the manufacturer is from Japan), Toyota or in actuality, TTE/Team Toyota Europe.

Cars serving TTE/Gazoo Racing top to bottom in zigzag pattern: TE20 during the Acropolis Rally in 1975 -> RA63 Celica -> TA64 Celica on display -> MR2 222D -> ST165 Celica at work -> ST185 at work -> ST205 Celica -> '97 Corolla WRC -> Yaris WRC -> Yaris Rally1

Toyota initially didn't get involved in rallying but Europeans were mad about rallying and when Toyota started to sell like hotcakes in Europe, its a matter of time that someone used it for rallying and someone in Sweden did just that. Ove Andersson, a Swede, had used a Toyota KE20 in 1972 and liked it alot thus he started to create a company and team, called "Andersson Motorsport" by 1973 and fielded a bunch of Toyota KE20s. The KE20 was equipped with the 1.6L inline-4 2T engine with 105hp and despite it being smaller in displacement than its contemporaries like the Escort who was at that point already using 1.8L engines, the KE20 did rather well and same goes to the upgraded version, the KE30 which uses the same engine. Andersson also proved that he could handle big operations and thus, with Toyota's full support, he became the main handler of all Toyota's efforts into the coming WRC efforts and thus his company started to change name to TTE and moved its operation to Belgium.

Throughout the middle of the 1970s, TTE had tried to use a bunch of Celicas starting from the TA22 and the RA40 for their effort in Group 2 and 4 but TTE didn't fare very well unlike their early 1970s effort with the KE20 and 30. Andersson liked the car when Toyota asked him to test it in Japan in 1976 but he also lamented that the 1.6L that was in the Celicas of that period would not work for the whole season of WRC as the others were using bigger engines than those in the early Celicas. Despite that, TTE's hands were tied as that was the car that they were given so they had to make do with it. The RA40 wouldn't win all the time but it did very well consistently in the years it competed in Africa and thus helped cement Toyota's toughness to take abuse and also its reliability status.

By 1982, Group B ruling came into effect and Toyota quickly changed their strategy also and thus, built a new car for the new Group B ruling and introduced the RA63 Celica but as they had no clue on how Group B would really do, they slotted the car into Group 4 regulations then modify from there for Group B. With the RA63, it has a 1.8L inline-4 engine that's an improvement from the 1.6L that was in the Corolla and with the 1.8L engine, the EA63 makes approx 110hp but in race trim could make about 160hp. The RA63 would also bag a win in Rally New Zealand, a win that TTE had hoped for after not getting one for over a decade. Despite being underpowered yet again against its rivals, its ruggedness once again proved vital in the tough rallies like the Ivory Coast rally/Rally Safari which was killing other cars but apparently not the Toyotas.

By 1983, TTE and Toyota finally were prepared to compete in Group B proper and to make it happen, they took the chassis of the Group 4 RA63 Celica and stuffed a new engine in there. Unlike the NA variant, the new Group B TA64 used an all-new 1.8L, dual-cam turbocharged engine coded as the 4T-GTE and was capable in making 320hp im race form. However, yet again, Toyota like many others were straight out beaten to the punch and lost out against the newest tech in rallying, Audi with their Quattro. Toyota would flounder in Group B for a long time with no aim at all as whilst the others like Lancia was busy making AWD models to combat Audi's dominance throughout Group B, Toyota didn't and stuck with the TA64 till Group B's cancellation in 1986. Despite that, Toyota and TTE would once again proved that they are the masters of reliability and also the "sultans of Africa" as Toyota clean swept the entirety of the African rallies by winning the Rally Safari, the most brutal rally in the calendar from 1982 to the end of Group B in 1986.

Unbeknownst to alot of people, Toyota actually built an AWD machine for rallying during the Group B era just that the whole series was canned and the car was also canned in the process and that's the 222D. Watching how AWD was the way to go and knowing that their turbocharged engine was working, Toyota quickly built a car for the newer branch out of Group B rules, Group S which essentially was an even "no bars hold" regulation. Toyota took the already tiny and light AW11 MR2, strip of all the metal and replace the bodywork with plastic, dump in an AWD system and a new engine, the 503E in there with a massive turbo and let it eat. However, before Toyota can test the car for the 1987 WRC season, Group B abruptly ended in 1986 and with Group S following Group B's death, Toyota and TTE got no use for the car anymore so they canned the project and mothballed the car also.

With Group B being canned, the FIA issued the Group A regulation where cars now are capped in hp to compete in the class and they must be normal production models sold to compete and not just homologation models. Toyota just nice had the new ST160 in 1985 so for Group A, they just need to slightly modify it and it'll work which became the ST165. This time, they slotted the soon-to-be legendary 3S-GTE engine into the chassis which could make 250hp due to new power restrictions rule, added AWD to it and named it the ST165. TTE would field the car in 1988 WRC and initially, it didn't do well by by 1989, it picked up pace and was doing well. By 1990, TTE got the car working and had kept the teething problems they faced the last two years to a minimum which helped their star driver, Carlos Sainz Sr in winning the WDC and cementing Toyota's name as the first Japanese manufacturer to win a WDC and WCC.

Continuing the success found with the ST165, Toyota took what they knew and stuffed it into the new chassis and made it work but this time, cranked the power to 290hp and it was a success winning the WCC from 1992-1994 and also winning the Rally Safari 4x in a row.

Onwards to 1995, Toyota yet again pushed out a new Celica, the ST205 and it kept everything the ST185 used. This time however, the game in WRC has changed. Mitsubishi and especially Subaru had now also switched from large barges to smaller sedans for their rallying effort and was showing progress to succeed. Terrified of their immense progress, TTE decided that they had to do something and they did something drastic. It cannot be seen with the naked eye but what TTE did was that they tempered with the internal of the intake to the turbos that each time the driver stepped on the accelerator, a small valve would open resulting to more air pushing into the engine from the turbo making 50hp more to the engine. That's an immense boost when your competitors were making just 300hp max. During the pre-season exhibition match, TTE "accidentally" showed their cards when their cars were way faster than both Ford and Subaru vehicles thus making Prodrive, the team that handles Subaru's WRC effort, made an official complaint against Toyota for cheating. Initial FIA test shows that the car was fine. By the 4th rally, the suspicion grew stronger as the ST205 was gapping everyone at alarming rate each rally thus the FIA had realized that Subaru's concerns and complaints were not unfounded thus instead of just checking the car at the rally stages like normal, the FIA seized the cars back to France and tore it down completely and to their shock, Subaru was right in their accusation as they finally found the air restrictor tempering system and thus, Toyota had all their points deducted in the 1995 season, got their team banned for the season and also for the following season.

At the end of 1996, the regulation changed again and for rallying, the WRC has their own specification standard following the series name but its just a small tweak of the Group A rules and Toyota, together with TTE, started to build a new car to compete in the new WRC regulation. TTE and Toyota took the E110 Corolla hatchback and transferred both the drivetrain and engine from the old ST205 Celica GT-Four and launched it at the Rally Finland in 1997. It would compete in the 1998 season also and performed rather well for itself but competition was fierce this time as both Subaru and Mitsubishi has become more stable across the years and their cars were also getting better, especially Subaru with their new Impreza WRC based on the GC8 platform. TTE would shine with the car in 1999 when despite not winning the WDC which was won by Tommi Makinen yet again for Mitsubishi, Toyota's steady fight and reliability shines again as their consistent results nabbed them the WCC/manufacturer's title. However, Toyota itself has ambitions to compete in F1 thus they left rallying and kept TTE dormant and shift their focus towards F1 proper.

Fast forward to the 2010s, Toyota hasn't been racing as a full factory support team in international motorsport since they left F1 in 2009 and Toyota hasn't been building anything sporty for a long time also. Not only that, Toyota's in-house support tuner house, TRD/Toyota Racing Development was doing well in the US but in Europe itself, there was nothing there. Somehow, someone at the top brass of Toyota's HQ had also realized that Toyota was losing its mojo and thus decided to take some cars, modify it and go racing thus he remembered that the company, TTE was still around in Belgium so he went there and started to tinker with the cars. However, he liked racing cars but didn't know how to so he started to learn the ropes from the beginning by entering in grassroots events across Europe then slowly building the team into a professional level, even changing TTE to the name, "Gazoo Racing" and that legendary man would be Akio Toyoda.

With the experiences gained along the way, the team started to gain traction and notoriety thus the company moved from the old grounds in Belgium towards Cologne, Germany and Akio had decided that they would compete in rallying again as their stepping stone like the past but once again, they were out of depth as they've been out of the sport for soo long that they didn't know on how to start but luckily, help was just round the corner. Just as Toyota was building the Yaris WRC concept back in 2013, they needed help and just nice, an old rival had opened shop himself and decided to get some chassis and engine from Toyota for his own team and that's Tommi Makinen. Hearing of that, GR straight up bought out Tommi Makinen and his entire company to churn it into the Gazoo Racing umbrella. With Makinen's help, they built the car around the XP130 Yaris "Vitz" platform, made it AWD and with the turbocharged 1.6L inline-4 making approx 300-320hp. Car would be completed in 2017 and would go under testing which by 2018 would bear fruit as it won the WCC in 2018, WDC in 2019, 2020 and both WDC and WCC in 2021.

With the success of the WRC efforts with the Yaris, Toyota built a special model of Yaris under the GR badge and with the new GR Yaris, it came with a smaller inline-3 G16E-GTS engine displacing 1.6L turbo and pushing 300hp. Toyota had initially wanted to push the car into WRC service as early as 2021 but decided not to as they heard that the rules for WRC would change again and thus, they held back and redesigned a new car based on the GR Yaris for the upcoming new classification, Rally1.

With the new regulation for the 2017 season, it allowed hybrid technology and being one of the pioneers for hybrid technologies with the Prius, it was in Toyota's wheelhouse and they got straight to work. The engine was the same as the previous WRC car being the same turbo inline-4 but this time upboosted to make about 350hp and the hybrid system making another 150hp with a combined hp figures approx 500hp, highest Toyota and GR has ever seen in rallying. GR straight up dominated the debut season with the Rally1 GR Yaris and won both WDC and WCC the very same year and yet again in 2023. However by 2024, the rule in Rally1 had changed yet again as the hybrid system has been removed now and GR quickly moved it and following the regulation, kept the car which now doesn't have the EV element to it from 500hp to a "mere" 370hp. Not that it derailed Toyota and GR's efforts anyways as the new car went on to win the WCC the very same year.