The facelifted GR Corolla has a stiffer body, an optimized air intake that should take some of the stress off the engine, and a new audio system. Prices start from ¥4.68 million for the manual version.
Added glue joints enabled the hatchback to become more rigid than before without also becoming heavier. Toyota says it added 13.9 meters (45.6 ft) of adhesive joints for a new total of 32.7 meters (107.28 ft). The front end, the undercarriage and the areas around the rear wheel arches were reinforced especially well. According to the company, the car is now ready to compete on tracks outside of Japan – they tend to be more challenging with greater overloads affecting the car than on the domestic tracks.
An extra air channel was added to the engine bay that only opens at higher acceleration, feeding cool air into the bay. In Toyota’s words, this enables the GR Corolla engine to run at high RPM counts for longer without overheating and losing efficiency.
Inside, the JBL audio system now consists of nine speakers instead of eight, which may not sound like much until you consider that the added speaker is a subwoofer. You can also now switch the audio system to “assist” the engine in making sporty sounds, something Toyota reckons might be fun during slower-paced urban driving.
Good news for the owners of older GR Corolla hatchbacks: you may now opt for a software update that raises the torque from 370 to 400 Nm (from 273 to 295 lb-ft). The current version uses a 1.6-liter three-cylinder turbo mill to send 304 PS (300 hp / 224 kW) and 400 Nm of torque to the wheels. The transmission can be either manual or automatic, and there are multiple torque vectoring options available for the standard AWD system.
