Toyota GR86 Rally Legacy Concept Pays Tribute to the Famed Celica GT-Four

The Toyota GR86 Rally Legacy concept breaks cover as a modern-day tribute to the legendary Celica GT-Four rally car.

The 2024 SEMA show is about to kick-off later this month, and many automakers have started to tease their upcoming builds and concepts for the show. While it’s too early to announce a winner, we’d reckon we might have one here from Toyota, as they recently unveiled a special rally build based on the GR86 sports coupe.

Cordially known as the Toyota GR86 Rally Legacy, this rally concept is essentially Toyota’s attempt to recreate its legendary Celica GT-Four rally car for the modern age. As we all know, the stock GR86 gets a rear-wheel drive (RWD) powertrain setup comprising Subaru’s 2.4-litre 4-cyl nat-asp ‘Boxer’ engine.

Instead of simply putting in an all-wheel drive (AWD) system to the existing Boxer engine setup, Toyota elects to swap the GR86’s entire powertrain setup with the GR Corolla’s turbocharged AWD powertrain setup. Although it sounds like a simple task, Toyota’s build team was required to make some extra modifications, such as putting on a new subframe to the GR86’s stock chassis, in order to fit this considerably larger and more complicated AWD powertrain setup.

As of now, Toyota has retained the GR Corolla’s AWD setup stock for the GR86, which comprises a 1.6-litre 3-cyl turbocharged engine rated at 300 HP and Toyota’s proprietary GR-Four AWD system. However, the team did say that improvements can be made for this setup in the near future that include a larger performance intercooler, a race-spec ECU, a better oil cooler, and more.

Powertrain swap aside, what truly brings the GR86 Rally Legacy concept closer to the famed Celica GT-Four it tries to emulate is the visual makeover done to this concept. The biggest highlight being the Castrol-inspired livery of this concept, which also incorporated the new Gazoo Racing branding here and there. To really sell this concept as a true pure-bred rally racer, Toyota has also fitted the GR86 with some rally-specific bits such as the red mud flaps, a massive rear wing, the rally-style hood-mounted quad headlights, and the Speedline wheels the car rolls on, which are shod in rally-prepped Michelin Pilot Sport tyres.

If that’s not enough, Toyota has also stripped down the GR86’s interior and clad it with some real racing parts, such as a full roll rage, Sparco carbon rally bucket seats with a Sparco steering wheel to match, and even a rally-style sequential gear shifter.

Given the extensive and detailed work done by Toyota on this GR86 Rally Legacy concept, it begs the question of whether this fully-decked rally concept serves as a preview for a new proper rally car by the automaker, possibly a long-awaited successor to the famed Celica. However, Toyota USA marketing boss Mike Tripp said that the company “did this build for our GR and Toyota Rally fans,” as well as their way to celebrate their past achievements and the possibility of the World Rally Championship making a return to the United States.”