Australia’s first race-ready GR Supra has been revealed as Toyota looks to steal the limelight at the classic Bathurst 1000.

The first Supercars contender from the country’s top selling brand will not hit the starting grid until the opening race of season 2026 but is already primed for demonstration laps at Mount Panorama in October.

Ironically, it was unveiled in Sydney just a single day after Toyota Australia closed the order books for the last run of the outgoing GR Supra road car.

Still, Toyota insists there is a long-term future for the Supra nameplate in Australia, despite the end of its collaboration with BMW on the car which has also been sold by the German brand as its Z4.

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“The current-generation GR Supra production car is being discontinued, but the nameplate will live on,” the vice-president of Toyota Australia, Sean Hanley, told Wheels.

“The entry into the Supercars Championship was always about promoting, lifting awareness, and showing the capability of the GR performance brand.”

It’s taken more than a decade for Toyota to commit to Supercars and it’s the first newcomer to the red-against-blue tribal fight – Ford versus GM – since Volvo, Nissan and Mercedes fled from touring car racing after failing to break the duopoly.

To do the job, Toyota turned to Walkinshaw Andretti United, a front-line Supercars squad with a history that includes decades as the official Holden Racing Team under the leadership of the late Tom Walkinshaw.

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Ironically, WAU is parking its current pair of Ford Mustang racers to switch to the Supra-car, a Toyota drive that will also bring four cars from Brad Jones Racing into the camp.

Toyota Australia has been responsible for the design and development of the new Supra’s competition bodywork while WAU has handled the installation of the race-specification V8 engine into the compulsory
mechanical package – with shared elements from the tube-frame chassis to suspension and brakes – used for the latest generation of Gen3 Supercars.

The heart of the car is a boutique racing version of the 5-litre 2UR-GSE V8 engine from the Lexus LC500 coupe, developed in Britain by Swindon Powertrain. It will produce more than 450 kiloWatts. But, because Supercars is a ’technical parity’ category under its latest Gen3 regulations, both the powertrain package and the aerodynamic bodywork must be developed – and limited – to ensure a match with the latest Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro competing in the category.

The GR Supra-car completed a successful roll-out in front of a VIP audience at Toyota’s giant complex at Altona in Melbourne last week and will begin its serious development program at Winton in two days
time. Driving duties will be handled by Supercars veteran Warren Luff, who has 23 starts and six podiums at Bathurst, as WAU’s full-time racers Chaz Mostert and Ryan Wood are contracted to Ford until the end of the year.

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Apart from development work and reliability testing, the GR Supra will also undergo complicated parity testing towards the end of the year in the USA, with wind tunnel and dynamometer measurements to ensure it is equal – but no better – to the cars it will race against from 2026.

See the full story in the October edition of Wheels, on sale September 22.