Toyota is building a new Celica, and I’ve been on track in it – mid-engined sports car coming in 2028

Rumours of a new mid-engined sports car from Toyota have been floating around for a while now, and many people believe that it’ll be the rebirth of the MR2. However, after spending a few days in Japan chatting to people at Toyota, including chairman Akio Toyoda, I don’t think this will be the case.

The MR2 was rear-wheel drive, and it topped out at around 240hp. This new car is all-wheel drive, and it could have close to 400hp. The return of the Celica has also been confirmed already, whereas the MR2 hasn’t. That’s why I reckon this is the new Toyota Celica.

Development of this car is well underway. The engine and suspension is being tested in a GR Yaris called the M Concept, and after some time on track in this car it has utterly blown my mind.

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New Toyota Celica design: what will it look like?

Toyota won’t actually admit that this new sports car will be called the Celica, but I reckon it will be. There’s not even a prototype to look at yet though, just the GR Yaris M Concept which is being used to test the engine and suspension.

Looking at Toyota’s other sports cars, this is what I reckon the New Toyota Celica will look like. You can see elements from the GR GT V8 supercar up front, with those pointy headlights being similar to that car. The bonnet is more steeply sloped though, because there’s no engine under there.

It’ll need some big air intakes down the side to cool the mid-mounted engine, and if the GR Yaris is anything to go by then the Celica will have plenty of aero kit to improve downforce and air flow over the car.

The massive diffuser and centre exhaust pays homage to the Celica’s racing heritage, and the tall spoiler is similar to the one found on the old Celica GT Four.

New Toyota Celica: engine and performance

Akio Toyoda hasn’t shied away from the fact he loves internal combustion engines. He told me in an exclusive interview that electric cars were his “biggest fear” about the future of motoring, so it’s no surprise that the new Celica is powered by petrol.

The prototype is based on a GR Yaris with the engine in the middle, and the story of how this came about is really cool.

Morizo-san (Akio Toyoda’s racing name) was driving a normal GR Yaris for testing, and he had this moment where he was going into a corner and the car was pushing on. He was thinking, “Just turn, rotate, rotate, rotate,” and he had to wait for it to grip at the front before the rear would slide.

So the discussions started: how do we make it rotate better? And the answer they landed on was basically, “Put the engine in the middle.” That’s where it all came from. And we drove that first prototype: 1.6-litre, 3-pot, mounted in the middle. It was a bit of a botched job, the way they’d cobbled it all together, but it was still huge fun on a gravel circuit.

It’s come a long way since then, and now we have the Concept M. It’s fitted with the all-new petrol engine which the Celica will get.

It’s called the G20E internally, and it’s a 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol which can produce around 400hp. That’s 120hp more than the standard GR Yaris, and it should also be just as reliable.

Toyota’s GR division has a strategy called test, break, fix, repeat. Basically, engineers will absolutely hammer the car until something fails, improve that part and start the process all over again.

And it even uses racing as part of the development process. Toyota, Nissan and Mazda created a new class of car for the Super Teikyu 24-hour race. One where their cars aren’t really racing, they’re just testing and developing certain features. Toyota raced a normal GR Yaris, as well as the M Concept, and the result was unexpected.

The standard GR Yaris finished in 24th place, but the mid-engined car finished second-to-last. That doesn’t sound great, but Toyota wasn’t actually trying to race the M Concept – it was testing how reliable it was.

Its engineers said that the M Concept was actually faster on the straights, but it’s still a bit twitchy in the corners. This made me nervous, because the following day I’d be going out on Toyota’s challenging test track in this car to see what it’s like.

New Toyota Celica suspension and driving: I have to have one

Toyota has made some of the best-handling sports cars in the world, and I don’t expect the new Celica to be any different. To get an idea of what it’ll be like to drive, I was taken around a track in the M Concept by one of Toyota’s test drivers – Sasaki-San.

But first, he took me for a spin in a normal GR Yaris GRMN. It has uprated suspension and a proper mechanical locking differential over the standard car, and I’ve driven one before so knew what to expect. There’s loads of grip, but the car pushes wide once you reach the limit. It feels fast, but pretty safe.

The M Concept is a completely different beast, as you’ll be able to tell in the video by listening to my various shrieks. For starters, it is ferociously fast. That new petrol engine is insanely powerful, and it has plenty of torque to give you that shove in the back when you put your foot down.

It’s also really, really lairy. I could see what the race team meant when they said it was twitchy, because in all the areas where the front-engined Yaris was understeering, the M Concept was rotating. I was glad to be in the safe hands of Sasaki-San, because this thing needs some serious skill to tame.

After taking some time to compose myself, I had a chat with Saito-San, Toyota’s chief engineer. The team is still working hard on refining the setup: some people like it flighty and edgy, which this setup clearly was, but others think it might be too tricky for normal drivers, so they’re looking for a midpoint.

Even so, you can see how eager it is. Off-throttle it rotates into corners, pitching in, requiring constant correction. But it’s so much fun. From the passenger seat, compared to the normal GR Yaris, it’s night and day. In its current state, you can tell it’s going to be super exciting, if a little bit lairy.

The Toyota GR Yaris M Concept blew my mind, and if the new Celica is even a tenth as good as this when it comes along in a few years, I just have to own one.

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