Is Toyota Bringing Back The Celica And MR2?

• Gazoo Racing’s life as a standalone performance brand begins with the GR GT.
• Toyota admits the V8-powered supercar “makes no financial sense,” but it’s coming anyway.
• The GR lineup is expected to expand downward with more affordable sports cars, including the reborn Celica and MR2.

High-volume models like the RAV4 and Camry definitely won’t set your pulse racing, but these hugely successful products give Toyota a license to print money. The Japanese automotive juggernaut is thankfully not run by accountants, as not every product in its sprawling lineup plays it safe by chasing profits above all else. Take, for example, the new GR GT, which the company itself candidly admits “makes no financial sense.”

The surprising disclosure comes from Toyota Senior Vice President of Automotive Operations Andrew Gilleland. In an interview with The Drive, he explained that the GR GT shows what the company can do when fewer financial strings are attached. The new V8-powered supercar perfectly embodies the “no more boring cars” mantra of Akio Toyoda, who served as CEO between 2009 and 2023 before stepping down to become chairman.

The mid-engine supercar heralds a new positioning for Gazoo Racing as a standalone performance brand. Both the road-going car and its track-only counterpart drop the Toyota logos and use GR badging instead. Despite the GR GT’s shaky business case, the company is determined to expand its performance car range downward with more models.

Are The Celica And MR2 Coming Back?

GR Celica rendering by Motor1

Photos by: Theophilus Chin | Motor1

GR MR2 rendering by Motor1

According to Autocar, the Celica and MR2 are both returning. Although Toyota has been testing a new turbocharged 2.0-liter engine for a while, it has yet to say which models will use it. The British magazine claims it’ll power the reborn MR2, with the new four-cylinder engine, codenamed “G20E,” sitting behind the seats. Engineers are targeting more than 400 hp from this engine in road-going cars, while uncorked versions for motorsport applications could potentially push out more than 600 hp.

It would make sense for the Celica to use a variation of the same four-pot in a front-engined application for a more affordable performance model. Whatever the case may be, the GR Yaris M concept is definitive proof that Toyota is working on a potent 2.0-liter engine, one that could replace the three-cylinder, 1.5-liter unit used by the GR Yaris and GR Corolla hot hatches, where it makes 300 hp.

Honestly, having so many niche models doesn’t seem particularly sustainable from a business standpoint. That’s especially true considering Toyota’s new CEO, Kenta Kon, recently said the company already has too many models. Funding fun projects while looking to downsize seems counterintuitive at a time when the meteoric rise of Chinese brands can no longer be ignored.

GR Celica rendering by Motor1

Photos by: Theophilus Chin | Motor1

GR MR2 rendering by Motor1

Motor1’s Take: Toyota deserves credit for putting its money where its mouth is. Plenty of automakers talk about preserving the fun-to-drive car. Still, Toyota is actually developing a supercar, seemingly resurrecting the Celica, and apparently bringing back the MR2 at a time when the business case for low-volume sports cars is harder than ever. It may not make perfect spreadsheet sense, but not everything worth doing does.

I haven’t even mentioned the Supra, which Toyota has already promised to bring back sooner rather than later. GR versions of the next-generation Yaris and Corolla make perfect sense, given that they would be based on high-volume products, making their business cases easier to justify. I can’t imagine the GR86 going away either, so the GR lineup could be delightfully varied in the coming years.