Displaying Items By Tag: Toyota

Need a good dose of 1990s nostalgia? How about this all-wheel drive JDM 1994 Toyota RAV4 listed on Bring a Trailer with no reserve? 

The 1990s were the decade of green. Name a car or truck, and it probably came in at least one or two shades. Your author's family had not one, not two, but three different cars painted in various shades of dark green simultaneously: a 1996 Volkswagen Passat VR6, a 1994 Dodge Caravan and a 1996 Dodge Dakota. This RAV4 would have been right at home next to the bright red Toyota Tercel that shared the same driveway. 

Thai car spotter Passakorn Leelawat caught what is suspected to be a prototype for the coming Toyota Corolla crossover on traffic-clogged roads around Bangkok, posting the photo on the Thai Car Inside Facebook page and catching the attention of Motor1. The angle and the camouflage make it difficult to be certain, but comparing certain details with the Corolla hatchback and Corolla Sport Touring wagon, elements like the side mirror, fuel filler cap, shark fin antenna and rear wiper line up. Even the character line from the lower rear fender into the bumper makes sense as a stylistic cue taken from the Touring. The recent dealer presentation leak said the high-riding compact is on the way next year, apparently planned for production from next September in the new Alabama facility Toyota is building with Mazda, so it's the right time for such a prototype to be out, too. The model's name, if an Australian trademark application is accurate, will be Corolla Cross. 

Said to sit on the TNGA-C platform, a Road & Track report from February said the Corolla Cross will compete against vehicles like the Subaru Crosstrek, a category that also includes the Honda HR-V, Nissan Rogue Sport, Hyundai Tucson and Mazda CX-30. That RT piece said the new people mover is "likely to replace the CH-R," where other reports slot it into the lineup between the CH-R and the RAV-4; Motor1 characterized positioning as "a more practical and traditional alternative to the C-HR ... simpler and more affordable than the RAV-4." Our CH-R is 172.6 inches long, the RAV4 180.9 inches; we'd expect the 172-inch Corolla Cross to grow some, placing it in between its stablemates. For a taste of how long the Corolla gets, the Corolla Touring wagon sold in Europe is 183.1 inches long.

This week, Toyota celebrated selling more than 15 million hybrids worldwide since 1997, 5 million of them in the past three years. It really began in 1993, when Toyota decided to develop a car that would be kinder on the environment. The car those engineers created, codenamed 890T, debuted at the 1995 Tokyo Motor Show, an event bearing the theme, "Dream the Dream, a Car with That Feel." That car was called the Prius. Who could have known the homely yellow wonder, looking like it had been pulled straight from a Japanese anime of the time, would reshape the automotive industry. The Wikipedia entry for the 1995 show doesn't mention the Prius, although it does mention the Honda S2000 concept and the Subaru Streega concept, which became the Forester. The New York Times wrote, "The concept cars shown this year will probably not make Detroit quake with fear. But they show some flair nonetheless," one of two sentences covering the Prius stating simply, "Toyota is showing a sedan of the future called Prius that should be able to get 70 miles per gallon."

Toyota has made hybrid technology a key component of its business plan and company personality since it first launched the Prius back in 1997. The Prius was the first mass-produced gas-electric hybrid vehicle on the road, and it has been at the forefront of hybrid culture ever since. Nearly a quarter-century later, Toyota continues to be one of the leaders in the green space, a fact backed up by a recently reached milestone. Toyota, including Lexus, has now sold more than 15 million hybrids worldwide.

Although hybrids initially earned a reputation as quirky vehicles lacking, er, enthusiasm, the word is no longer a harsh restrictor. Today, Toyota has a fairly big lineup of vehicles with varying levels of hybridization and diverse purposes. In total, Toyota of America offers eight different hybrids, including the fuel cell Mirai. The bunch includes a small sedan, a large sedan, a premium large sedan, a two-row crossover, a three-row crossover, and two flavors of Prius hatchback. Plus, Tundra and Tacoma hybrid pickup trucks are also expected in the not-so-distant future.

In Japan, the Toyota GR Supra is split into SZ, SZ-R, and RZ trims. The SZ and SZ-R trims use a 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine, while the RZ trim uses a 3.0-liter turbocharged inline-six. For 2021, Toyota upgraded the RZ with more power and announced two special-edition models, one in Horizon Blue and the other in Matte Storm Gray Metallic. The Horizon Blue Edition also features new wheels and matching interior accents and is limited to 100 units.

The 3.0-liter engine in the Japanese GR Supra RZ is getting an update for the new model year. The outgoing model produced a claimed 335 horsepower, as does the current U.S. Supra, at 5,000 rpm, and 369 lb-ft of torque at 1,600-4,500 rpm. Weighing in at 3,351 pounds, it could race from 0-60 mph in 4.1 seconds (American market figure). The new Supra RZ will make a claimed 382 horsepower at 5,800 rpm and keeps the same torque number of 369 lb-ft but at at 1,800-5,000 rpm. It adds 22 pounds for a total weight of 3,373 pounds and can sprint from 0-60 mph in a slightly improved 3.9 seconds.

The 2021 model year upgrades received by the Toyota GR Supra in North America and Europe will soon find their way to Japan too, headlined by two new special edition models.

In early 2009, the Google Self-Driving Car Project was born, evolving over the years into what we now know as Waymo.

One of the hottest cars of the moment, the 2020 Toyota Supra, will be added to Gran Turismo Sport through an update released on April 23.

Toyota waited over a month to introduce the pint-sized crossover it planned to unveil at the 2020 edition of the Geneva Motor Show. Called Yaris Cross, the smallest and most affordable member of the company's growing range of high-riding models was primarily developed with the needs of European motorists in mind.

Built on the same basic platform as the newest Yaris, the Cross stretches 164.5 inches long, 69.4 inches wide, and 61.4 inches tall, dimensions that make it approximately seven inches shorter, an inch narrower, and about as high as the C-HR. It's less spacecraft-like thanks in part to a tall, upright front fascia, squared-off wheel arches covered by plastic trim, and a relatively high amount of ground clearance. The fully-loaded model defies its entry-level label with 18-inch alloy wheels, LED lighting on both ends, and two-tone paint.

Update: Toyota told CarScoops that they will present the new B-SUV on April 23. “Indeed we will unveil this vehicle on 23rd April, in a digital way”, said a spokesperson.

Until the 1986 model year, when the North American-market Toyota Celica went to front-wheel drive and the same platform as the T150 Corona, we knew the Celica as an affordable, sporty-looking machine with the same basic R-engine/rear-wheel-drive layout as the sturdy Hilux pickup. In regions that don't suffer much from the teeth of the Rust Monster, some late RWD Celicas have stayed in service long enough to keep showing up at the big self-service car graveyards I explore. Here's an '83 notchback coupe that just barely reached six figures on its odometer, photographed in a San Francisco Bay Area self-serve yard last fall.

The past few months have been full of lust and clamoring for a U.S. version of the Toyota GR Yaris that debuted at this year's Tokyo Auto Salon for markets including Japan and Europe. Platform differences between our Yaris and the overseas model prevent all the possibilities here. However, one of Toyota's U.S. execs told Car and Driver in February that the automaker had "an answer" for our cravings, without specifying a model. C/D guessed the exec meant a hot Corolla, while other outlets put the C-HR up for candidacy. A new report in C/D says the Corolla is the one to get the hot hatch makeover, arriving here by 2022, the same year as the Corolla-based crossover leaked in a dealer presentation. Working with the same 1.6-liter turbocharged three-cylinder as in the GR Yaris, the Corolla will make 257 horsepower and well over 200 pound-feet of torque. The same engine is tuned to 268 hp and 273 pound-feet of torque for the Japanese GR Yaris, and 257 hp with 266 lb-ft in Europe.

Although we're already talking about a much peppier Corolla thanks to the engine swap alone, we should expect a GR Corolla could be a noticeably less aggressive animal than the GR Yaris. C/D doesn't believe the latter car's World-Rally-Championship-inspired all-wheel drive will make it here, a feature that helps the supermini get from zero to 62 miles per hour in 5.5 seconds, and the GR Yaris can be optioned with limited slip differentials on front and rear axles. That Corolla must make do sending its power to the front axle. Furthermore, the GR Yaris two-door weighs 2,822 pounds, a figure achieved with the help of aluminum hood, doors, and hatchback, plus a carbon fiber roof. The max curb weight for the standard four-door Yaris in the UK is 2,513 pounds. Our Corolla XSE, in a segment larger than the Yaris, weighs 3,060 pounds.

While the idea of an Aston Martin SUV may have rubbed a few people the wrong way, it is far from the only controversial vehicle released by the British manufacturer. Arguably the most contentious Aston Martin ever was the Cygnet city car, based on the Toyota iQ of the day.

The Land Rover Discovery HSE TD6 is one heck of an SUV and in this latest video, CarWow set out to see how the Discovery performs against some other powerful SUVs in its class in a tug of war.