Out Of Body
March 2, 2026
Alex KiersteinToyota’s new WRC27 Rally1 car, spied testing in Portugal, has the Celica revival rumormill working overtime.
Toyota is making another move in its rally revival. Remember, Toyota is bringing a rally car back to America: the GR Corolla RC2 will compete here in the ARA series. And internationally, the Yaris—the nameplate under which it has competed in FIA WRC since 2017—may be being retired. A new body was spied during testing in Portugal and DirtFish has confirmed that it’s Toyota’s upcoming 2027-spec WRC car. It doesn’t look much like the Yaris.
Actually, it doesn’t look like much of anything that Toyota sells currently.
Since historically WRC cars had to have some relation to a production car body, and the new WRC27 shape is a little coupeier than its hatchback predecessor, AND Toyota has been doing nothing to shut down the MR2 and Celica revival chatter, people are hypothesizing things. Toyota might be using the WRC27 car to telegraph a roadgoing Celica.
After all, the Celica is a rally legend. (It’s also a Pro/Celebrity Race legend, but I don’t think anybody is pinning a Celica revival on that legacy.) If you’re going to bring it back, doing so from the peak of contemporary rally is the way to do it.
Except, I don’t think Toyota is doing it. I certainly could be wrong, I don’t have any insider Toyota motorsports knowledge. I do know that WRC27 Rally1 regs don’t require or even encourage manufacturers to base their car bodies on a production vehicle. There’s no homologation requirement.
The WRC27 Rally1 cars are silhouette cars. This continues a trend that started in 2022 with the last Rally1 spec. The idea is to reduce costs and thus attract more competitors. But while Rally1 cars used to be required to at least resemble a production car, that is no longer the case.
Rather than requiring cars to be derived from current production models, the regulations define a reference volume within which all exterior panels must sit. Within that space, Constructors are free to develop anything from production-inspired designs to bespoke rally concepts, while simplified aerodynamic devices aim to keep development costs in check.
Toyota’s WRC27 car is chunky and short, more sport utility coupe than GT-Four Turbo All-Trac. I have two theories about what Toyota will do to capitalize on the marketing potential here. One is that the WRC27 car will indeed be called a Celica and will resemble, maybe not proportionally, an upcoming GR Celica. I am still a little confused about the need for a Celica in the lineup with the GR 86 likely sticking around for a while, but I am also not a marketer.
The second is that it will simply be a more exciting shape not tied to a specific model. Toyota could just call it the GR-Sport or something and use it to claim rally-derived DNA trickling down into all of its GR products.
Why go to the trouble of making a new coupe-like body if you already have the GR Corolla, which is so similar to the GR Yaris, and is sold in North America? Toyota is building them in the UK and European sales are under consideration. It wouldn’t be too hard to just make the GR Corolla into a global rally performance model. That, I can’t answer. There’s enough ambiguity in the GR road car lineup already for me not to have a read on the best move here.
Here is what I do know: whatever the Toyota WRC27 car is called, it doesn’t mean there’s necessarily a road car coming.
Recent Posts
All Posts
February 27, 2026
February 26, 2026
February 25, 2026
Leave a Reply