Toyota set to unveil 735kW GR Super Sport in 2022

Toyota is rumoured to be planning a 2022 unveiling for its road-going hypercar, the GR Super Sport.

According to Autocar, the road-legal two-seater, which is based on the Japanese automaker’s GR010 Hybrid racing car specifically developed for the Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) series, will serve as a halo performance car product for the Gazoo Racing brand upon its release.

However, despite utilising the platform of the new LMH-class car, the new GR Super Sport won’t come equipped with the same 3.0-litre V6 hybrid powertrain found in the racer.

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A prototype of the Toyota GR Super Sport performing a demonstration at the 2020 running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans

Instead, the rear-drive weapon will receive a version of the drivetrain previously found in the middle of the Toyota’s triple Le Mans-winning LMP1-class TS050 Hybrid.

This 2.4-litre direct-injection twin-turbo V6 will be fitted with a ‘Toyota Racing System’ hybrid set-up, and according to sources, the Aichi firm hasn’t ruled out the possibility of the GR Super Sport running a triple motor hybrid system.

Power is said to be in the realm of 735kW, but with the implementation of the aforementioned tri-hybrid tech, this figure could be even higher.

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An early visual study of the GR Super Sport

Toyota has decided to go ahead with building its Aston Martin Valkyrie and Mercedes-AMG One competitor, even though technically, it no longer needs to.

That’s because the rules governing LMH racers changed drastically in 2018 and, crucially, automakers are now no longer required to make a minimum of 20 road-legal homologation specials to compete in the top class of the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC).

In fact, the rules around LMH have changed so much that unique racecars with all-wheel drive and hybrid powertrains which could never even hope to be road legal, can compete in the WEC.

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But with development already well underway, and Toyota’s boss, Akio Toyoda, a diehard driving and motorsport enthusiast, the hypercar is still going ahead.

It’s not yet known how many units Toyota will actually make, nor whether any will land in Australia. How much it will cost is another answer we'll have to wait for too, but the eventual price is likely to easily eclipse the GR Yaris, GR 86 and GR Supra already in the brand's performance line-up, especially given the bespoke engineering required to manage such an enormous power output.

A representative from Toyota Australia told WhichCar that it is aware of the hypercar’s ongoing development, but any more details about the GR Super Sport are yet to be confirmed.