Yahoo Autos Toyota Confirms Hypercar Based on Le Mans Winner: Here’s What We Know
In January, Toyota and its in-house motorsports arm, Toyota Gazoo Racing, took to the Tokyo auto salon and showed the world its stunning GR Super Sport concept, which looked suspiciously like Toyota’s TS050 Hybrid LMP1 race car in a nightshirt. At the time, Toyota Gazoo Racing’s president, Shigeki Tomoyama, characterized it as “the starting point for Toyota’s completely new challenge to develop sports cars from active race cars” and stated that Gazoo had started developing “a next-generation super sports car” with hybrid technology gleaned from its experience in World Endurance Championship (WEC) racing.
Toyota Gazoo Racing brought the concept car at the 24 Hours of Le Mans this year, where, in case you missed it, both of its TS050 racers not only finished the race but finished in first and second place-a triumphant win after the last couple of years during which mechanical failures produced a series of heartbreaks at the vaunted endurance race. Toyota took the opportunity to confirm that, indeed, development of the street car has already begun. “It takes the cutting-edge hybrid electric systems and fuel-economy technology that the Toyota Gazoo Racing WEC team has tested and refined during the past six years in WEC, and showcases them in one superb package,” the company said in a press release.
Toyota didn’t provide many new details about the GR Super Sport, saying that it is composed of “mostly the same main parts as the TS050 Hybrid race car” and is powered by a hybrid powertrain that combines electric power and a mid-mounted, twin-turbocharged 2.4-liter direct-injection V-6 for a total output of 986 horsepower-incidentally, the same output as the Le Mans–winning TS050.
Toyota has also begun using the H-word-“hypercar”-in the vehicle’s press materials, and Tomoyama’s message about its state of readiness has shifted from “it will be some time” to “at some point in the near future, customers will have a chance to get behind the wheel of this incredible machine and experience its astonishing power and driving performance."
Still unknown is the expected price for Toyota first ever hypercar, but after the Toyota Gazoo Racing team’s extraordinary performance at Le Mans this year, it likely just went way up.
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