In an era of electrification and enthusiasts complaining about the takeover of boring technology-ridden cars Toyota just came out swinging with a V8-powered sports car.
On December 4 just outside Fuji, Japan at the automaker’s Woven City the Toyota Gazoo Racing GR GT debuted. The power plant? A new, clean-sheet, in-house designed, engineered, and built twin-turbo V8 hybrid powertrain. And people, it sounds pretty pretty damn good.
The sound? Upon starting up it gives the briefest of Japanese wails, but immediately settles into a low idle. There’s no deep burble and this is by no means some aggressive cam setup. Lumpy idle fans are going to be underwhelmed.
Revving the snot out of the V8, which don’t worry, we did, provides a satisfying, and very Japanese-like smooth with its tone. It’s mellow by some standard This doesn’t wail like a flat-six or bellow like a V8 from Detroit. If a Lexus V8 wailed it would be like this, smooth, almost subdued, but just the mildest bit uncorked.
The best descriptor I’ve come to so far is Toyota’s delivered a smooth gentleman’s battle cry under full tilt.
Anyone longing for the Yamaha-tuned wail of the LFA’s V10 is going to be underwhelmed. This GR doesn’t scream like that.
The basics: The 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 has a hot V setup with an undisclosed (for now) amount of boost huffing out a preliminary estimate of 641 horsepower and 627 pound-feet of torque.
Though, the engine isn’t doing all the work here. An electric motor sandwiched between the carbon fiber driveshaft and transaxle in-house design, engineered, and built 8-speed automatic transmission does add torque fill and power in that mix, though how much is unknown at this point.
Of course, the cars we saw, touched, and revved were hand-built early prototypes and merely representative of production cars. But production is about a year away and development is not complete yet. It’s unclear if the final cars will even sound exactly like this. For now, Toyota’s given the world a new smooth-sounding V8.
Toyota provided travel, lodging, and raw fish which I definitely did not eat to bring you this first-hand report.
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