There was once a time when Toyota was a dominant force in rallying. The Celica GT-Four grabbed a significant number of wins, as well as world championships, but the Japanese carmaker retired from WRC in 1999, showing very little interest in the sport again until just recently. There has been some testing of a Yaris-based WRC car, but we've only just heard a firm date on when Toyota plans on returning to the world of top-tier rallying.

No less personage than Akio Toyoda has stated that Toyota plans to return to WRC in 2017. This would be good news no matter what. But what makes this especially interesting is that WRC rules are going to be changing for the 2017 season and will be allowing for more powerful engines and a greater variety of engine types. Toyota has been siting in on WRC rule meetings, and must surely be formulating a strategy for how best to work within these rules. So although we're eager to see how all manufacturers will respond to the rule changes, Toyota is especially interesting, as it is this change which seems to have brought it back in.