Toyota GR Corolla | High Price for Old School Fun

Inside the GR Corolla, so what do you need to know? First off, there are three different trim levels. You have the core, which is the only trim level sold in Canada, and has the base trim level sold here in the United States, which does have some optional packages like differentials, the cold weather package, the technology package, which adds things like the JBL sound system. That's what you're primarily going to find in dealers. You have this circuit edition, which is somewhat of a limited trim level. They're only going to build a couple thousand a year. It has all the optional features as the core as standard, but it also adds a carbon composite roof, which shaves a little bit of weight, but really is more of an appearance piece, has some exclusive colors, and has a leather-trimmed interior. Then you get the Marizo edition, which has some mechanical changes. It is so limited we are never going to see one really in the real world. They're limiting it to a couple hundred a year, and by the time a dealer gets ahold of you, it's going to be $90,000. It doesn't have back seats, it has a harness bar, doesn't have rear window regulators. It's the hardest core model, but again, you're never going to get ahold of one. Well, this is based on the standard Corolla hatchback. Most of the key touch points and design of this interior are essentially the same, which comes with some pros and cons. The con is, unlike the Civic Type R and the Golf R, Toyota has not removed the ---- from ---- box. This still feels like an economy car. If you're spending over $40,000, it will be a negative. Much of the plastics of this car feel like they've come out of a gumball machine. Nearly everything is covered in piano black, and this car only has a couple thousand miles on it, and it's already scratched and covered in biohazard material, which is definitely a con. The pro is, it has an old-school feel. You get things like a manual parking brake, which is huge. It's not an enormous vehicle like the Civic Type R, so it feels more maneuverable. If you've come from something like a WRX STI, you will feel right at home. It has that old-school, more raw feel. Well, the main things that have changed are the pedal box, the steering wheel, the shifter, the center console, and the seats. The Cor gets a more aggressive seat, but it is cloth. The Civic and the Marizo get the seats essentially out of the Supra. The one thing I will say about the seats in this car is the seating position. You are up relatively high, which, depending on who you are, may be a pro, but for me personally, it's a con. You have the sensation of riding on top of the car versus being in it. The one thing I will bring up from an ergonomics perspective is, in the GR Corolla, they have deleted the armrest, which is a big bummer. I don't know why they did this. It's supposed to feel sportier. It's honestly just a pain in the ass. The pedal box is not all that tightly spaced, so if you have smaller feet, you are going to run into problems heel-toeing this car. They've tried to remedy the pedal box issue with a rev-match feature, which is located right next to the steering wheel. And speaking of other drive modes, you have this physical twist knob in the center and a rocker up front that control your drive modes and your all-wheel drive system controls. Very quickly, from an exterior perspective, most of the body panels of this car are unique to the GR model, so the front and rear fascias are unique. You have wider fenders in the front, and in the rear, you have over fenders. This is a much more aggressive looking car. But with all that said, I think it's time for us to head in the shop and put this thing up on the lift. Mark, we're finally underneath a GR Corolla. This is a circuit edition, but before we talk about the technical aspects of this vehicle, let's talk about the various trim levels and money. So you have the Core, which is the only trim level sold in Canada, and it starts in the mid-30s. And with all the optional packages, which are things like the technology package and the performance package, it comes in at about $39,000, and that's pre-destination. This circuit, which is mechanically identical to the Core when it comes to suspension and performance package and all other fun stuff, just comes with everything as standard, is $43,000. The one body difference is it has a carbon composite roof. Lastly, you have the Marizo, which is ultra limited. They're going to only build a couple hundred a year, and it's nearly $50,000. And it has some substantial mechanical differences, which we will be talking about later. But before we do that, let's hear from the chief engineer about the philosophy behind this product and its sister car, the GR Yaris. So in terms of advanced technology, of course, industrial parts, we have some variety. Even try to minimize, still we have some variety. So the precision of the suspension is very important for a sports car. So every suspension part was measured before assembled. Then data is accumulated to the AI, then find out the best combination to cancel each variety. That is one unique and one special advanced technology for the GR factory. Then combined with Takumi's craftsmanship in the GR factory, so body and suspension are precisely docking. Then a final process of the GR factory measures alignment to be in some certain level as a sports car. The body structure is different from a regular Corolla. So they wanted more specialized production for it, and that facility allowed them the flexibility and the production capacity, which you would think they'd have the production capacity. Clearly, they don't. But they've made some changes to the body structure from a regular Corolla jack. So let's start there. So it's the same wheelbase as the regular Corolla, which is in fact the longest GR wheelbase product. It's longer than the Supra, and it's longer than the Yaris and the GR86. So it means it has more stability, but it's much wider. It gets a wide body, which you can clearly see when you look at it, it's like 50 or 40 millimeters wider in the front and like 80 or 90 millimeters wider in the rear. It allows it to have these wider tires for more mechanical grip. The core and the circuit both get 349 spot welds to help increase rigidity, about 9 or 10 feet of more adhesives, again, to increase the rigidity of the car. The Mariza keeps the same number of spot welds, but it goes up in adhesive amount. It goes up by 11 feet, so it's a more rigid body. We want to walk through some of the other body changes marked on the Mariza before we talk about the suspension. So the big difference between the Mariza is they wanted it to be hardcore. This was something for Toyota. You know, Akio Toyota got behind the car during the development. He's like, it's not connected enough. It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel hardcore enough. And I think they hit the point of like, what are most of the people going to buy? And what are the car that we want to make that's like fun? So that's what the Mariza edition is. The spring rates are higher by necessity because of the tire grip from the Cup 2s. They made some changes to the dampers. You went from twin tubes on all the other cars to a monotube damper. You have the changes to the interior rigidity by removing the rear seat and putting a big support bar in the back. And there's a harness point where you can mount a harness bar in the interior as well. There's screw holes for that. The other part is they changed the shifter bushings. They put a reinforced bracket in there for better feel. Different materials like suede or Alcantara type material so you have better grip in the steering wheel and the shifter. The seats are different, more supportive. It's more of a semi-bucket. And then you go to the manual transmission. Obviously, it's the only option. They changed the gear ratios and they also reinforced the gear sets with some shot painting and different components. So it's just a more hardcore car. And on top of that, they upped the torque. Goes from like 273 to 290 plus 295. So it gives it that extra oomph that you need to make it feel more special. It is lighter a little bit. It's just a more focused car all the way around. So getting back to the suspension of the core and the circuit, again, they are identical. Particularly when you option a core with a performance pack. And to be clear, you can get this car with open differentials. Don't. You should be getting the two torsion differentials. So in the front, you have a different subframe than the standard Corolla. It's lighter by five kilograms. And the geometry has also been changed. They've raised the roll center to get closer to the center of gravity to have a little bit more stability. It's camber stability. That's what it is. You're adding more camber here and they just want more stability under lateral load because you're producing a lot more grip than the traditional TNGAC car had. The spring rates of the core and the circuit are 50 newton meters front, 60 newton meters rear. If you get a Marizo, it's 55, 80. That's again, primarily built around the tires. The Marizo gets cup twos that are 245s. The circuit and the core get 235s pilot fours. They are a much less aggressive tire. The brakes though are essentially identical. They have a two piece rotor design with a giant monoblock caliper. When it comes from aero, while there's not a ton of downforce on this car, they have smoothed out the underbody of this vehicle. There's more coverings on the underbody to reduce lift and reduce drag as well. The big thing though, from a chassis dynamics perspective, obviously the rear has had to be changed because this is all wheel drive. Mark, you want to explain how the GR4 all wheel drive setup works? This is a first for Toyota on like an eco fun platform. And the long story short is it's a front wheel drive platform. It's the same, right? So you have your front differential, which opt for the torsions, of course, it's always sending power to the front wheels. Always. Okay. And then they have a drive shaft that goes from the transfer case to the back. There's no center differential here. That drive shaft is always spinning and it goes to a torque coupling that is connected and disconnected in the back via a wet multi-plate clutch system. And what it's doing is it's taking the torque away from the front and pulling it to the back. So as those clutches grab based, it's all software based. It doesn't matter what mode you're in the mode. All it's doing is allowing you the maximum amount of torque. So if you go 30 front 70 rear, but it's not going to be continuously sent there. So if you're on a straightaway, it doesn't detect that you're turning the wheel. It will release that clutch plate in the back. And then all that torque will transfer to the front. It's also about thermal management. They can't, this is not designed. There's no coolers on the back. So it's not always going to be on in the back like that. Just think of that clutch system as pulling away from the torque from the front to send it to the rear up to 70%. And that's how it's managing it all through software and all their algorithms that they've designed and tested through all their motorsports development that he talked about. The modes exist so you can tell it what to prioritize, but it's not always going to meet those numbers. If you listen to the chief engineer, essentially what he says is this is always going to behave like a front wheel drive car first. They wanted to take the inherent imbalance, but front wheel drive cars specifically turn in. So won't understeer as much. So as you turn in and power, it'll prioritize sending power to the front first, and then it will send the power to the rear. So it'll give you the corner exit stability of an all-wheel drive car. So you're supposed to be getting both the best of both worlds, but this will not feel like a torque vectoring diff or a rear wheel drive car. It's always going to feel more front wheel drive like an old Subaru WRX STI. A lot of this software design is to manage temperatures in the back. It's not a system designed to have 100% load to the back all the time. It has to take power away from there. Even if you're in 30-70, it's going to look for where you can have conditions where those clutches can let go and send more torque to the front. Like if you're in a straight on a circuit, that's how it maintains it. That's really the software thermal management of this system, Jack. But if you do load this thing all the way up, and I talked about in the interior commentary, there's no rear differential temperature gauge that you can see inside the car. It will inevitably overheat the rear diff. So if you're on a track with a lot of turning, a lot of heat involved, if you run a stickier, wider tire, you generate more friction. Sooner or later, it's going to go into limp mode, and it'll become a front wheel drive car, which sort of defeats the purpose of a lot of this. If we do a long-term series on this car, which we are heavily debating, please comment in the bottom if you want us to do an ownership series like we did for the GR86 on this car. We'll figure out if we can fix that problem. I've heard exhaust wraps, coolers, blah blah blah. We'll hopefully figure it out. Yeah, and we're planning to buy it for your daughter for a sweet 16 anyway, so it'll just work out. So let's talk about the engine, but first let's hear from the chief engineer. Actually, there is some story. So before joining the Super Taikyo race with Hydrogen Carola, we joined the GR Yaris. So two years, two seasons. So we joined the Super Taikyo series with GR Yaris. We find many issues with the engine if we want to increase the horsepower. So that's why we can quickly improve the horsepower for the GR Carola. Actually, this is a motorsports-based development. So at first, what we worked on is to reduce the back pressure. So it's easy to increase horsepower by just increasing the boost, but in that case, it's difficult to manage the exhaust system because high back pressure prevents closing the exhaust valve. So at first, we implemented a triple pipe exhaust system to reduce the back pressure. Then also, we needed to reinforce the exhaust camshaft support to make exhaust valve moving precisely. So we added additional support to the exhaust camshaft and we reinforced the exhaust valve spring. Then also, we need to put in more fuel to generate more power. Of course, power is almost equivalent to the fuel, the amount of fuel injected. So we reinforced the capacity of the fuel pump for the direct injection. So we have two injectors, one is a port injector, the other is a direct injection. So we increased the high capacity fuel pump by 20%. Then also, we need to improve the cooling system. So we have an oil cooler attached to the engine. So GR Yaris have a 10-layer cooler, but the GR Corolla has a 14-layer cooler. Then we also reinforced the pistons to bear the high combustion pressure. That is the main improvement point from the GR Yaris. All right, Mark, this is the 1.6 liter three-cylinder that everybody knows and loves. You've heard the core mechanical bits from the engineer, but the one thing to note is power delivery. We're going to talk about it a little bit in the drive, but the joy of this versus something like a Civic Type R or an E888 found in a Golf R is it doesn't give you torque all at once. You actually have to work for some of it. So you can maybe argue that having to wind out your engine and not having peak torque at 2,000 rpm is a con in a track or more performance-based car, but you have to wind this thing out, which is why it's actually pretty entertaining. They have added more thermal capacity into the design. The oil cooler is bigger than it was on the GR Yaris. They've thought about that more. They have more space to work with, but this is still, because it's a small engine and you're jamming so much power into it, it's going to be more sensitive to heat soak. So that power that you're getting on a cold day versus a warm day will be much more apparent in this than something that is, you know, thought out in terms of thermals better. And this is just probably a small displacement. In the Mariza, you're running almost 30 psi. Yeah, it's crazy. It's nuts. So Mark, with that, let's go take this for a drive on our favorite farm road. All right. Cliché farm road, Mark. We are finally not in Utah. We're not in a hundred degree, like... We're in one of the most advanced driving areas in the United States right now, Jack, and let's get this GR Corolla off the line. Let's see how bad I bog this thing. All right. You don't even have traction. Oh, you do have traction. God, that **** clutch. Holy **** does that stink. That just warmed it up for this drive. I think one of the things I appreciate about this engine, as we talked about the shop, it's not all at once. Unlike the Type R and the Golf R, you actually have to wind this thing out. Peak torque comes up higher in the RPM band and you have to work for its rewards, which may objectively make it worse, but out here in the real world, it makes it more entertaining. Oh, it makes it far more entertaining. And I drove this today and I thought to myself, man, like, I'm so down on this car because of our track experience being such a dud. I mean, it was so hot. The car was so... We were at such a high elevation. I mean, it was worst case scenario. Now we're at the best case scenario. Got great power. Got great grip levels. The thing feels fast as hell. There's a ton of traction, ton of grip. The car's not going to ever overheat or get heat soaked out here. And all you want to do is drive like a maniac and you can. And we talked about this before we got in the car and you're like, that's not rear wheel drive. Why would you get this when you could have a rear wheel drive car? And I get it when you come up and you've had more experience and more cars where you like the rear wheel drive experience. But myself, I didn't get to grow up experiencing that. I didn't get in cars when I was young until I was in my twenties where you can actually afford a car. And this, to me, at 25 would have been, or 30, would have been the ideal car because it's fast. It feels safe. It feels neutral. You can drive it at 10 tenths on the street and you don't feel like you're going to lose control of the car, even with everything off. I love how quick and nimble it is. You can flick it in a corner, you can do something completely asinine and the thing does not lose control and you can just pound and pound and pound it. And it's just fast enough to be fun on the street. I'm in two different minds about this car. There's a part of me that like, why would I buy this? I can't power oversteer this thing everywhere, like a BMW or a V8 American car. But, you know, being in the mind of someone who's actually going to use this car in the real world, like we have access to racetracks where I can drift cars around. In the real world, you can't really do that. And in the real world, when you drive this, when you're not dealing with the mechanical deficiencies on track, it is such a capable car. If I only drove this on the street, and we never did the track drive, I would have a much better opinion of this car. It is amazing. The turn-in isn't as good as the Type R or the Elantra N, but your ability to get out of corners is incredible. There's no traction issues and there's no grip problems coming out of a corner. We talked about in the shop how the all-wheel drive system works. So, you understand that. If you understand what it's doing, it makes way more sense. But... I'm so emotional. No, I mean, it still feels front-wheel drive when you really, really get on the edge of it. But you can still lift off. You lift off and the car rotates. But the big thing here, compared to all the competitors, basically every competitor out there, is the sound of the engine. It's a big x-factor in driving like an eco shitbox, even though this is not an eco shitbox. It's a performance hot hatch, but it has an engine character to it that the four cylinders don't have. The four cylinders that are adding all the fake engine noise, like the Type R, it really does give you some emotion, even though you're dealing with a three-cylinder. It's a huge pro to this, including the shifter. You have a manual shifter, you have a physical parking brake, and you can't even... I can't even tell you how amazing it is to have this once you get used to having an electronic parking brake and how big of a pain in the ass that is, especially in winter, when if you just want to pull it up to get some rotation out of it and reduce understeer, having this here is like a godsend in all season conditions. So, I mean, I think my opinion has changed on this car greatly driving out on the street. And driving flat out, I can see why somebody would pay $40,000 plus for this and enjoy it every day. It is really amazing. This is the closest thing to a spiritual successor to something like the WRX STI currently sold. It still has the old school charm of a somewhat chintzy interior, right? But it has the Japanese character you're looking for in a car like this. I will say it's a street car. If you're purely going to use this for commuting and having a little bit of fun on your commute, compared to its immediate competitors, though, it's definitely far less refined. Oh, it's far less refined. But you're not... you're not... you're not expecting that out of this car. You're not expecting total refinement. And I think that's what Toyota did a great job, is they understood that they needed a real, like, Toyota performance car that was driver-focused. And they did sacrifice some of the refinement out of this car to make it a little bit more edgy. It doesn't ride anywhere as well as the Civic Type R or the Golf R. It does not. And I think I'm okay with it until you get on really bad pavement. If you're in an area that has really, really bad pavement all the time, it's going to get old fast. But on normal roads, you can tell it's very compliant. It's very comfortable. You don't have adaptive dampers. You don't have all electronics associated with that, which means if you're buying this, that means you can go to the aftermarket and kind of sort of sort out some of those suspension deficiency problems with this. You add more tire to it, like we've also talked about. You're going to have a very, very high-performance, all-season car that you're going to be tearing up all the roads. You're going to be going nuts in this thing. And I really like it. Gearbox, engine performance, steering, turn-in, turn-in, exit, or exit, and of course, initial grip off the line is all at a very, very high level for a car like this. I can't wait to drive one of these things in the snow. I'm sure if it's wet out, you can get the rear to rotate. I mean, I've seen people do donuts in this thing in a parking lot. I'm sure on bad roads with gravel and snow, it'll be very, very entertaining. This is not going to do like pirouettes in the dry. You're not going to be getting this thing to like fly around and rotate like that. The all-wheel drive system is not designed to do that. That's not how this is. But in wet or in snow, you can get some of that fun, where you can't do that in something like the Elantra. Yeah, with this, so with that, Mark, I think it's time for us to wrap this video up. All right, Jack, let's do it. Here it is, the conclusions on the GR Corolla. We've had it on track in extreme conditions and heat, and now we've had it on the street in colder climate at near sea level. What does that mean for you? The takeaway is this car, in large part, it feels like a throwback to when cars were more simple. It really came to mind today driving it. It felt like a Honda Fit of the past or some of these older like mid-2000s cars because of the interior simplicity. It doesn't feel overburdened with a bunch of technology. It feels like a very connected driving experience, one that is really no bullshit. And I think if you're of the age and if you're the mentality of that, where you don't need a ton of space, you don't need a CUV or an SUV, you don't need a larger car like the Civic Type R, there's a lot of charm to driving this. It's one of the better cars, at least on the street, to go pound around all season long. Snow, rain, everything, it can do it all with the right tires. And I really, really like that about it. Now, if you've come from a lot of cars, you're not going to like the sacrifice you're going to have to make for this price. When you're pushing $44,000 for a Corolla, this is the era we live in. And when you add on the dealer gouging part of it, hopefully that's not forever. But right now, if you're having to pay upwards of $50,000 plus for this, you can count me out. It's totally a waste of money for that. It's too chintzy on the interior. It doesn't have the capacity that it should have. Still a three-cylinder engine. I would rather much have a higher performance car or even used one over this. But if you're not paying over sticker and you're getting this and you know exactly what you're getting into and the sacrifice of interior capacity and all of that and some of the outside looks, you're going to love this car. It really is one of the best driving cars of the modern age that brings back some of the old school charm that we've been desperate to have in a driver's car, or at least a hot hatch. I'm going to leave it at that. Thanks for watching. See you next video.