Click for more Gazoo.
Toyota Gazoo Racing (TGR) held the world premiere yesterday of its latest GR Yaris at Tokyo Auto Salon 2024* at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan. Sales in Japan of the new GR Yaris are scheduled to start this spring through Toyota vehicle dealers. The racing hot hatchback might find it’s niche on American roads, if there remains any market for a small pocket rocket amidst the tidal waves of SUVs and pickup trucks.
Toyota consolidated motorsports activities under Gazoo Racing in 2015. “Gazoo” is based on gazō, Japanese for image. TGR has continued to compete in various motorsports following the debut of the GR Yaris. It has been implementing “driver-first car-making” through repeated “breaking and fixing” in extreme environments and reflecting feedback from professional race drivers and evaluation drivers, as well as from Toyota Motor Corporation Chairman and accomplished driver Akio Toyoda, aka Morizo.
As a symbol of TGR car-making, the GR Yaris was born through making ever-better motorsports-bred cars. TGR has continued to compete in various motorsports including the Super Taikyu Series, Japanese Rally Championship, and FIA World Rally Championship using the GR Yaris since the model’s launch in September 2020.
“That is because problems that occur in the extreme environments of rallies and other races provide opportunities to evolve the GR Yaris into an ever-better car. Under the slogan of ‘Thanks for breaking it’ directed at the drivers who pushed the vehicle to its limits, TGR honed the GR Yaris through constant enhancements, thoroughly pursuing the cause of problems by analyzing driving data, reviewing steering feel, and examining what kind of scratches and dirt were on broken parts,” Toyota said. This time around the Motomachi test circuit, TGR collected “drivers’ opinions not only in the vehicle’s power but also in its body, interior, exterior, and elsewhere to comprehensively enhance vehicle performance,” Toyota said.
Based on Morizo’s desire to provide what is termed as the fun of driving to as many people as possible and expand the base of motorsports,, gasp, an 8-speed GAZOO Racing Direct Automatic Transmission has joined the GR Yaris lineup. The new transmission was developed to allow more drivers to compete in races using an automatic transmission that Toyota claims equals manual transmissions. Well, pace purists, Toyota among the global leaders in automaking is in the business to sell vehicles.
Automatic Trans Technical and Other Talking Points
- The automatic transmission control software has been optimized for sporty driving. While conventional gear shifting relies on sensing vehicle behavior, such as deceleration g-force, speed, etc., the optimized software also monitors the way the driver steps on the brakes and operates the accelerator. By doing so, it anticipates when gear shifting is necessary even before changes in vehicle behavior occur, realizing gear selection that reflects the driver’s intentions and, thus, leading to gear selection that is similar to how professional drivers shift gears.
- The use of highly heat-resistant friction material in the automatic transmission’s gear-shift clutch and enhancements to the transmission’s control software have resulted in world-class gear-shifting speeds.
- The use of close-ratio gears, made possible by increasing the number of gears by switching from a 6-speed manual transmission to an 8-speed automatic transmission, achieves driving that makes the most of the engine’s power band.
- The RZ “High performance” trim level is equipped with a Torsen® limited slip differential that enhances driving force control performance through accelerator operation.
- Applying motorsports experience, the direction of shift-lever manual-mode gear shifting has been reversed. Upshifting (acceleration) has been changed to pulling the shift lever, and downshifting (deceleration) has been changed to pushing the shift lever in line with vehicle behavior. This results in operation similar to that of a race car’s sequential transmission.
- There’s a new 12.3-inch full-color TFT gauge display with a focus on visibility and the vehicle information necessary for sporty driving. In vehicles with the GAZOO Racing Direct Automatic Transmission, in addition to an automatic transmission oil temperature display, a visual warning has been added to the gear position display in the gauge display to augment the conventional sound-only alarm for better alerting the driver that downshifting is not possible due to overly high rpms. This change reflects requests from drivers who used a prototype vehicle in the Japanese Rally Championship and whose comments included calls for easy-to-understand warnings even during competitions in which helmets are worn.
- Thw 3-cylinder 1.6-liter turbo engine output has been increased from 200 kW (272 PS or ~268 horsepower) to 224 kW (304 PS, ~300 hp ) and torque from 370 N-m (37.7 kgf/m) to 400 N-m (40.8 kgf/m or 295 lb. ft.).
Toyota GR Yaris Debuts at Tokyo Auto Salon 2024
Click for more Gazoo.
Toyota Gazoo Racing (TGR) held the world premiere yesterday of its latest GR Yaris at Tokyo Auto Salon 2024* at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan. Sales in Japan of the new GR Yaris are scheduled to start this spring through Toyota vehicle dealers. The racing hot hatchback might find it’s niche on American roads, if there remains any market for a small pocket rocket amidst the tidal waves of SUVs and pickup trucks.
Toyota consolidated motorsports activities under Gazoo Racing in 2015. “Gazoo” is based on gazō, Japanese for image. TGR has continued to compete in various motorsports following the debut of the GR Yaris. It has been implementing “driver-first car-making” through repeated “breaking and fixing” in extreme environments and reflecting feedback from professional race drivers and evaluation drivers, as well as from Toyota Motor Corporation Chairman and accomplished driver Akio Toyoda, aka Morizo.
As a symbol of TGR car-making, the GR Yaris was born through making ever-better motorsports-bred cars. TGR has continued to compete in various motorsports including the Super Taikyu Series, Japanese Rally Championship, and FIA World Rally Championship using the GR Yaris since the model’s launch in September 2020.
“That is because problems that occur in the extreme environments of rallies and other races provide opportunities to evolve the GR Yaris into an ever-better car. Under the slogan of ‘Thanks for breaking it’ directed at the drivers who pushed the vehicle to its limits, TGR honed the GR Yaris through constant enhancements, thoroughly pursuing the cause of problems by analyzing driving data, reviewing steering feel, and examining what kind of scratches and dirt were on broken parts,” Toyota said. This time around the Motomachi test circuit, TGR collected “drivers’ opinions not only in the vehicle’s power but also in its body, interior, exterior, and elsewhere to comprehensively enhance vehicle performance,” Toyota said.
Based on Morizo’s desire to provide what is termed as the fun of driving to as many people as possible and expand the base of motorsports,, gasp, an 8-speed GAZOO Racing Direct Automatic Transmission has joined the GR Yaris lineup. The new transmission was developed to allow more drivers to compete in races using an automatic transmission that Toyota claims equals manual transmissions. Well, pace purists, Toyota among the global leaders in automaking is in the business to sell vehicles.
Automatic Trans Technical and Other Talking Points