Tokyo - Toyota’s GR Super Sport Concept, revealed at the Tokyo Auto Salon on Friday, is basically a Le Mans race car that’s been reconfigured for the road.
Although the race-bred supercar is, strictly speaking, still a concept car and may never see the light of day as a production vehicle for that matter, the Japanese carmaker insists that the concept gives us a good idea of where it is heading with its future road-going sports cars.
Developed by Toyota’s Gazoo Racing division, the concept is closely based on the TS050 Hybrid LMP1 endurance race car, sharing “mostly the same main parts”.
At its heart is a hybrid drivetrain that mates a 2.4-litre twin-turbo direct injection V6 petrol engine to a set of electric motors for a combined power output of 735kW.
Toyota says that despite the move towards autonomous and electrified transportation, it has embarked on a journey to “make cars fun for the next 100 years”.
A big part of this will be transferring know-how from its racing exploits to real-world performance cars, or as Gazoo boss Shigeki Tomoyama puts it:
"Rather than developing production cars into sports cars, we aim to work out how to incorporate the know-how developed through races and rallies into production cars amid various restrictions, and this is how competing contributes to Toyota Gazoo Racing's efforts toward making ever-better cars.
“Thus, this is the starting point for Toyota's completely new challenge to develop sports cars from active race cars.”