Opinion: Why Toyota needs an old man from Porsche

You may not know of Roland Kussmaul. He’s not one of the car industry’s limelighters. He joined Porsche’s engineering department in the 1960s straight out of university and his first job was developing the Leopard tank. His talents for developing vehicles on challenging terrain were noted by the manager of the racing division, Peter Falk, and Kussmaul soon found himself in charge of Porsche’s customer rally teams. He co-drove in a 911 with Bjorn Waldegård, winning the 1969 and ’70 Monte Carlo Rallies.

From there, he worked on the development of all-wheel drive rally cars for Paris-Dakar. In 1984, he drove an AWD Type 953 Safari 911 in the event, ostensibly as a spares support car for the two lead vehicles and accidentally won two stages in the process.

Kussmaul’s imprimatur is on the incredible 959, the Le Mans-winning 962, the Carrera Cup and RS versions of the 964, the 993 RS and RSR, the astonishing GT1 hypercar and he’s also the father of the 911 GT3. In terms of impact on the performance car landscape, Kussmaul is a reluctant and diffident icon.

He’s also the mentor of Andreas Preuninger, Porsche’s current director of GT cars. “He was a legend in the company,” says Preuninger. “Most of the stuff I learned about cars, about the setting up of cars, of the car as a system that has to work in synchronicity with all the parts moving and how a car gets the right feeling. That’s all I learned from him.”

Preuninger’s office at Weissach is Kussmaul’s old office. Over half a century of knowledge from Porsche’s motorsport roots was passed with reverence from one man to the next. That continuity of expertise has resulted in a series of cars that are unrivalled in terms of consistent dynamic cohesion. That is key.

That’s what makes a Porsche feel like a Porsche, whether it’s a 911 GT3, a Taycan EV or a Macan SUV. It’s why the next-gen Boxster EV has its battery packs in the same place as the current gen’s engine, CofG be damned, so that it feels like a Porsche Boxster in the way it shifts its masses. These reasons are why the 992 GT3’s victory at Performance Car of the Year 2022 had an air of inevitability to it. You could say that excellence is indeed expected.

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The walls of Weissach might seem an odd stepping off point to consider Toyota’s new GR Corolla, but it’s very much a case of compare and contrast. From the underwhelming demise of Celica in 2006 and MR2 Spyder in 2007 to the introduction of the 86 in 2012, Toyota didn’t sell a performance car. Even after the 86 arrived, it took another seven years for the Supra, another joint venture, to debut.

You could argue that given their respective Subaru and BMW genes, neither the 86 nor the Supra were a pure expression of Toyota’s true sporting DNA. The GR Yaris was the first, and as fascinating as that car’s story is, the one thing it signally lacks is that dynamic cohesion that Porsche does so well. It’s angry and undeniably quick, but the mark of a truly great car is the fidelity of response.

A consistent input should result in a consistent output. The Yaris fights you. Drive it on a challenging road and it pogos, bucks and kicks back. It’s undeniably exciting but there’s little that’s fluid about it. You emerge juiced and grinning but quietly aware that you’ve never once settled into a satisfying flow with the vehicle. A colleague likened it to adopting a bull terrier that’s trying to assert dominance.

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The Corolla is sprung from far more promising bones than the Yaris. Fanboys of the GR Yaris will doubtless take issue with this, but from a purist driver’s perspective, the Corolla is a superior piece of kit.

It steers better, it has a superior base platform to work from, the driver’s hip point is in the correct position, the pedal positioning is better, visibility out of the car is far less impeded and the front and rear ends were co-developed, rather than the GR Yaris’s mix and match of the base Yaris’ GA-B platform front end and the Corolla’s GA-C rear end.

Tommi Mäkinen and Akio Toyoda hit a lot of development targets with the GR Yaris. It told a great story, made some incredible numbers, underscored Gazoo Racing’s commitment to lightweighting, featured a mighty three-cylinder engine and fulfilled its initial homologation brief, even if much of that subsequently proved unnecessary.

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What the GR Yaris signally didn’t do was incrementally build on the dynamic precedent set by the 86. Nor did the Supra. For obvious reasons, each car starts virtually from scratch. It’ll be interesting to see how the GR Corolla, which takes certain elements of the GR Yaris’ mechanical formula, moves the game on. Will it be a case of another Toyota sports car that shares little or nothing in terms of dynamic signature with any of its forebears?

Hyundai N under Albert Biermann is a fascinating case study in building a specific set of specific dynamic characteristics that feed through each of its models. It doesn’t have half a century of backstory, fast-tracking that process in a mere handful of years. Toyota needs to define what its sporting cars are, how they feel and what they stand for.

Few car manufacturers will ever have someone as steeped in the essence of the brand as Roland Kussmaul, but the way in which he helped refine the dynamic signatures for an entire marque are worthy of scrutiny. Akio Toyoda would do well to have a chat to an affable 83-year-old who now spends his well-earned retirement tinkering with his cars and bikes in his garage in Eberdingen, nine kilometres - or 370 seconds by a demonically-pedalled GT3 in the dead of night - from the gates at Weissach. It seems bizarre, but a legend from Porsche may well know more than anyone alive how to make a Toyota GR feel like a Toyota GR.