Toyota to buy GM's FHI (Subaru) Stock

I think Toyota is in business to make money, not to buy themselves a WRC car.

 

You can already go out and buy a Toyota AWD sports car. It's called the "All-Track Turbo". Sure it's now at least 10-13 years old but they're still a lot of fun! And you get the same engine that's in the MR2 Turbo, the 3S-GTE.

If Toyota wanted back in the WRC they'd just do it. I believe Toyota holds the most WRC titles of any manufacturer. They dominated in the 80s and also in the early 90s before they were caught cheating.

 

Oh man! This could take a while.

Race Car Engineering had a big write up on it at the time, I'll see if I can remember enough. It'll take me a while to write it down...

 

Ok. Toyota is currently BANNED from competing in the WRC due to their cheating in 1995.
http://www.rallycars.com/Cars/Toyota_GT4/Celica2.html

This is the way it went down. During that year the Toyotas were looking to take the Championship. But, all year long many had suspected something was up. The scrutineers went over the cars with a fine tooth comb but could never come up with anything. The turbo was within spec, as was everything else on the car. But, everyone noticed that the Celica was about the same speed as the others threw the corners until it went in a straight line. Then it was noticeably faster than the other cars even with the naked eye. Now to limit the horsepower in rally cars the FIA has regulated the use of a turbo restrictor. This is device, resembling a tube, with a regulations specified dimensions fits in the turbocharger's air intake to limit the air flow and consequently the engine's output. But whenever the Toyotas was pulled and measured it was within spec, as said before. At what I believe it was the last or second to last race of the season one of the scrutineers decided to pull the turbo and intake off the car as one piece… and cut it down the center without removing the intake! This is when the cheating was discovered. What was found was an ingenious device. It was a kind of double lip within the intake. When the intake was mounted onto the turbo a small outer circle actually allowed air around the regulated intake, by only like .5mm. But, when you took that amount as a circle it added quite a bit of extra HP. When you removed the intake the inner tube dropped into the outer lip closing the gap. The gap was so small that when you did this you couldn’t physically tell this was occurring.

A huge Brew-Ha-Ha erupted with Toyota claiming they had no knowledge of the device and Toyota Team Europe, who were actually running the car on behalf of the Manufacturer, also said they had no idea of the existence of the device. Each saying the other “might” have provided it or, maybe a rogue race engineer. Needless to say the WRC had none of it and tossed Toyota out on it’s ass for a few years in total disgrace. That's the short version.

From what I’ve heard they’re already running an AWD Corolla in testing trials to hit the Championship as soon as the ban is lifted. So, you’ll get your AWD Toyota soon enough.

 

That was only a two year ban, they re-entered the WRC in 1998 with the Corolla WRC car, but didn't do very well with it and withdrew factory teams in 2000, supposedly to concentrate on F1.

They currently run it in the Australian rally championship as a "prototype" car, but I don't think there are any plans to make a production version. The only turbo AWD Toyota car is the ST246 Caldina, which is a Japan only model available in 4 speed Tiptronic Auto, no manual version

 

I thought the FIA only found out because the car crashed.