Toyota Confirms the Celica’s Return as a Rally Race Car for 2027

• Toyota confirmed that it will race a new GR Celica in the 2027 World Rally Championship.
• The rally car will likely share little with the production car that’s expected to be announced at some point.
• The road car may not arrive until closer to the end of this decade, and it’s unclear if it’ll use the upcoming mid-engine platform Toyota is developing or take a different route.

The Toyota Celica is coming back, and it’s going racing. Toyota today revealed its plans for the 2027 World Rally Championship, and the automaker decided to compete with two separate teams running two different cars. While Toyota Gazoo Racing will run the GR Yaris, a new team simply called Toyota Racing will field a new GR Celica rally car, which is expected to eventually spawn a road-going version too.

Both cars will compete in the top Rally1 class. The GR Celica race car will ride on a new control chassis that will be shared among all teams competing in Rally1 as part of a regulatory change for 2027. The new rules will also see Rally1 cars use adapted versions of the turbocharged 1.6-liter inline-four engines currently found in the Rally2 class. This means the GR Yaris Rally1 and GR Celica Rally1 will essentially be identical underneath, differentiated only by the bodywork placed atop the chassis.

While the GR Celica will start its racing career in 2027, we may have to wait quite a bit longer before we can get behind the wheel of a new Celica on public roads. Changes to the rules mean that WRC teams can now race with cars that do not have a road-going counterpart, although we still expect Toyota to build a new Celica production car. The common chassis and engine in Rally1 next year allowed Toyota to pull up development of the race car, but the road car is still years away and will have little in common with the race car under the skin.

Rumors have pointed to a mid-engine platform that Toyota is working on, also expected to underpin a return of the MR2 sports car, although this platform could also be exclusive to the MR2. Other reports have suggested a front-engine setup for the GR Celica, which would be more in line with the Celica’s heritage. The GR Celica Rally1 car will mount its engine up front.

Earlier this year, the head of Gazoo Racing, Tomoya Takahashi, said the mid-engine platform had only entered the first of four development stages, and the platform isn’t expected to be ready until closer to 2030. The platform is also expected to usher in a new turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-four, codenamed G20E, that could push out north of 400 horsepower.

Even if the Celica doesn’t use this mid-engine platform, it could still be a few years away, since minimal information about the production development has slipped out of Toyota’s walls. A previous report suggested it may even be an all-wheel-drive hybrid, but no powertrain details have been confirmed.

Prototypes of the new rally car have been testing in camouflage this year, although it’s unclear how much of the bodywork will carry over to production. While there are still a lot of unknowns, Toyota’s announcement remains an exciting proposition, demonstrating the automaker’s commitment to fun, enthusiast cars even after winding down production of the latest Supra.

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Caleb Miller began blogging about cars at 13 years old, and he realized his dream of writing for a car magazine after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University and joining the Car and Driver team. He loves quirky and obscure autos, aiming to one day own something bizarre like a Nissan S-Cargo, and is an avid motorsports fan.

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