The world is raving about the new Toyota GR Yaris, but had things gone a little differently, it would have been competing, in race guise, in the World Rally Championship.
Anyone who owns the WRC 9 video game will be able to drive the Toyota GR Yaris Rally Concept from the comfort of their homes, on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
Six times world rally champion Sebastien Ogier announced on Friday he had shelved retirement plans and signed up for another year with Toyota after a COVID-19 affected 2020 season.
The 36-year-old Frenchman is still in the running for a seventh title but is 14 points behind Welsh team mate Elfyn Evans with one round remaining, the Monza Rally in Italy next month.
Few performance cars have captured the attention of car enthusiasts in 2020 quite like the Toyota GR Yaris. Even less have been so divisive, with some reviewers panning it – like JDM Masters (see the review here), while others are commending it, as is the case with this test by Jonny Smith from The Lake Brake Show who recently had the opportunity to put one through its paces in the UK.
Infiniti just revealed an off-road prepped QX80 that will take on the Rebelle Rally this week. Beginning today, the Rebelle Rally is an all-female rally where racers navigate off-road terrain from Lake Tahoe to the Imperial Sand Dunes by the U.S.-Mexico border. It's 1,200 miles of rough terrain, so the luxurious QX80 needed a little help to get ready for it.
The big bruiser of an SUV was handed off to Calmini Products Inc. in California for the prep work. It got a three-inch lift, heavy-duty control arms, off-road performance shocks, high clearance front and rear bumpers and thicker skid plates. The new Off-Road Monster 18-inch wheels are wrapped with chunky Nitto Terra Grappler all-terrain tires. We wouldn't normally say this about an Infiniti, but this QX80 looks badass.
Lexus transformed the LX, its biggest SUV, into a supercharged off-roader that sends chills down the Ford F-150 Raptor's spine. Although it's only a concept, it will attempt to tame the desert during the 2020 Rebelle Rally.
Based on the venerable Toyota Land Cruiser, the LX is a formidable off-roader even without any modifications. Many examples nonetheless end up decked out with aftermarket parts, and it's these go-anywhere rigs that inspired Lexus to create the J201. Its name comes from URJ201, which is the current LX's internal designation.
Toyota's in-house tuners TRD and Modellista have released aftermarket parts for the new Yaris Cross on the same day the subcompact SUV debuted in Japan.
Dozens of young people in Japan's Fukushima Prefecture have rallied against a government panel's proposal on how to dispose of radioactive wastewater stored at the crippled Daiichi nuclear power plant.
About 50 people, including fisheries workers, marched through Koriyama City on Sunday.
Toyota is prepping a few significant updates for the eighth-generation Hilux, which has been in production at factories all over the world since 2015.
It's winter sports season in many parts of the world, and auto manufacturers are using that as an excuse to make some pretty fun specialty versions of their vehicles. Only hours apart, Bentley unveiled an adventure-ready Continental GT, while Alpine dropped a surprise design study called the A110 SportsX. Similar to the Buick Regal TourX, the X indicates the lifted vehicle's rugged personality. Alpine has managed to squeeze a lot of fun variants out of the A110 since debuting the sleek sports car. After the Alpine Vision concept turned into the production A110, which debuted at Geneva in early 2017, Alpine announced an A110 Cup race car in late 2017. In 2018, Alpine announced another race car, the A110 GT4, and in 2019, an improved A110S with sharper suspension and 288 horsepower debuted. The coolest A110, however, is the A110 Rally, which debuted in late 2019. The just-announced A110 SportsX takes inspiration from the Rally but drops the oversized wing for some skis. Alpine's exhibit at the International Automobile Festival at Les Invalides in Paris, France, is called "Between Retrospective and Prospective." The stand features "present and fantasized models, whose storyline is a back and forth between two eras and the richness of Alpine's history as an inexhaustible source of inspiration." In attendance were the A210 prototype, the Alpine Vision Gran Turismo, the Alpine A110 1800 Gp4 driven by François Alessandri and Jean Pierre Manzagol in 1972, an A110 "berlinette" 1300 from 1971, the A110S, and the the A110 SportsX. Alpine says the SportsX, which is based on an A110 Pure, is inspired by the winning A110 rally car from the 1973 Monte Carlo Rally. The design concept is 3.1 inches wider and has 2.4 inches of extra ground clearance. Visually, it has a two-tone look, thanks to a dark hood and roof, and a ski rack has been mounted over the rear window. Black accents are found along the body, and the front fascia features a more aggressive aero piece. It also has dark wheels, X marks on the fog lights, and little French flag accents throughout. As a design exercise, the SportsX will not make production as it stands. This might be one of the only chances to see this car in a public place, so anybody in Paris should check it out if they can.
Grande première ce soir au @Festivalauto avec l'annonce de ce concept @alpine_cars spécial sports d'hiver !#alpinea110 #alpine #ski
https://t.co/g9O2B0yciZ — Festival Automobile (@Festivalauto) January 28, 2020
Spaniard Carlos Sainz became a triple Dakar Rally champion with the Mini X-Raid team at the age of 57 on Friday, while American Ricky Brabec took the motorcycle crown for Honda and ended KTM's 18-year dominance. Brabec is the first American to win the Dakar on two wheels since the grueling endurance event started from Paris through the Sahara desert to the Senegalese capital in West Africa in 1979. Both were also the first winners in Saudi Arabia, a country making its debut as host of an event staged in South America for the past decade. Two times world rally champion Sainz, whose son and namesake races in Formula One for McLaren, ended the final timed stage with a 6 minutes and 21 seconds advantage over Qatar's defending champion Nasser Al Attiyah. Sainz also won Dakar in 2010 and 2018. His three victories have been with different car manufacturers, the first coming with Volkswagen and the second in a Peugeot. "We started winning this Dakar on day one, and we have gone flat out from the beginning," said Sainz, hailed by his son on Twitter as a legend. Brabec had started four previous Dakars, but Friday was only his second finish. "At the end, we put the pieces to the puzzle together," said the American after an event marred by the death of Portuguese rider Paulo Goncalves in a fall last Sunday. "I woke up this morning just happy to ride the last day. And we're here. We won. We had to be smart and focused every day. There's no top guy on the team, we all work together, we're a family. We all won." Triple champion Al Attiyah won the final stage to finish as overall runner-up for Toyota with Frenchman Stephane Peterhansel, a 13 times winner on two and four wheels and Sainz's team mate, completing the top three in his 31st Dakar. "I'm coming back to win next year. I just needed a bit more luck," said the Qatari, who applauded and embraced Sainz at the finish. Two times Formula One champion Fernando Alonso, a Dakar rookie, was fourth in the final stage and finished 13th overall for Toyota. Australian Toby Price, the 2019 motorcycle winner and leading KTM rider, finished third overall behind Chilean Pablo Quintanilla. "It's not the result we came for, but I'm quite glad. Every time that I've lined up and I've made the finish line, I've been on a podium step," said Price. "This, for me, is a big achievement, especially after these two weeks being tough. We just regroup and get ready for the Dakar 2021 and we come back here to try and get that number one plate back." In the truck category, Russian Andrey Karginov took his second Dakar crown in a Kamaz one-two with compatriot and team mate Anton Shibalov. Chile's Ignacio Casale was the quad champion for a third time while American Casey Currie won the lightweight side-by-side (SSV) category introduced in 2017.
Toyota have really outdone themselves with the new GR Yaris, a subcompact hot hatch with state-of-the-art engineering and power levels that broke cover at the 2019 Tokyo Auto Salon.