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Mar 14, 2023

Why We Love This Insane New Toyota GT

Once feared on both the virtual racetrack and in real life, this new redesign of

Once feared on both the virtual racetrack and in real life, this new redesign of the GT-One could also be Gazoo Racing's latest secret weapon.

Some cars in the early Gran Turismo video game series could inspire fear on the racetrack. They seemed to obliterate other cars in their classes and proved to become icons, for those still unfamiliar with their real-life origins.

For example, the Tommy Kaira ZZ-II, Suzuki Escudo Pike's Peak version, and this – the Toyota GT-One. Once you unlocked one of these, racing became easier, and the GT-One is an impressive GT1 racing car with its own interesting backstory.

HotCars digital artist Rostislav Prokop is responsible for this new, updated version of the 1998 Toyota GT-One; a theoretical performance car that builds on the insane 90s road car resulting in something that could trouble Rimac, Pininfarina and Nio on both the road and track.

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Toyota's GT-One got the code name ‘TS020’, and despite featuring in both Gran Turismo and theoretically existing as a drivable road car, its focus was to compete in GT1 racing alongside behemoths like the Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR.

Rules stipulated that it needed a trunk and windshield wiper – so it featured a cigarette packet-sized wiper and Toyota said that the trunk was in the fuel tank – and just like that, all that they would need was a homologation car.

The GT-One road car got built to comply and added the bare-essentials to the 600-hp, 3.6-liter twin-turbocharged V8-powered Le Mans competitor. This render reimagines the craziest Toyota road car ever, celebrating the existence of such a machine by refining the design and making it look like a 2023 model. It is present in red, like the original GT-One road car, and features a similar design - that of a Le Mans Prototype racer.

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Those iconic compound headlamps get replaced with LEDs, and there are subtle changes that stand out with the power of the internet – where you can compare both the render and the real car side by side.

Up front, the hood gets recessed behind the pointed nose, and the rear wing is now also supported by a central vertical stabilizer. Extra ducting on the sides replaces the original open design, with air exiting the front wheels and entering engine intakes, and extra ducting entering the rear axle for brake cooling and air optimization.

Then moving to the back, one of the most obvious changes to the GT1 hero is the rear lighting, an LED light bar that includes a Toyota badge and prominent diffuser below.

You can never own a Toyota GT-One aside from Gran Turismo: A single GT-One got produced for the road and is now in storage, with a theoretical value of up to $10 million, although ‘priceless’ is probably more accurate. As for the Tommykaira ZZ-II, it never entered production, and you’ll have to build your own Suzuki Escudo Pike's Peak.

Hailing from Britain, the home of both MG and Aston Martin, Dave is no stranger to sports cars. Or a little rain. When he's not busy working his day-job or writing songs and pretending to be a musician; Dave indulges his obsession with cars by writing and researching diligently, so that he can inform and convert other people to the dark side.