Toyota sells a ton of cars, in fact, it builds the best-selling car of all time, the Toyota Corolla. The Corolla has lived a quiet life for the better part of its 56-year career (AE86 excluded) but the recent unveiling of the Toyota GR Corolla has flipped the entire hot hatch market on its head. The 2023 GR Corolla is a 300-horsepower rally car for the streets and follows the introduction of the bonkers GR Yaris, an all-wheel-drive city car turned rally champ that punches way above its weight division. The GR Yaris has proved to be such a hit that Toyota is worried that the GR Corolla will sell out too quickly, and is now warning dealers not to take too many orders. What a nice problem to have.
Demand for this hot hatch is so high, that Toyota America is asking dealers in certain areas to stop taking orders. "We have places right now, and parts of the country where there are so many orders being taken, we have to stop," said Jack Hollis, senior vice president of automotive operations at Toyota Motor North America, in a recent interview with Road & Track. The GR Corolla is being hand-built in Toyota's Motomachi factory in Japan, and only 6,500 of these special cars will be built for the 2023 model year. Toyota plans to limit production to 8,000 units after 2023. So it makes sense that dealers are running out of stock in the blink of an eye.
Toyota nearly created an angry mob when it announced that the GR Yaris would not make it to US shores, so the latest news could trigger some pushback, but Hollis gave hope in his recent interview with R&T. "Every product, whether it be Yaris, Corolla, 86, Supra comes from this family of GR, or this GR company. So when you say 'Did we consider the GR Yaris?' we consider anything. It was just that we knew that GR Corolla fit our market... Doesn't mean the GR Yaris couldn't come here either, it's just that the GR Corolla is what we made a commitment to." Demand seems to be higher along the coast, but the good news is that there are still cars available, but good luck finding one without a heavy markup.
The GR Corolla will be launched locally later in 2022, and with it should come more info on pricing.