What you see here is the Toyota GR Yaris M Concept, which made its public debut today at the 2025 Tokyo Auto Salon.

As its name suggests, this is not a production car, but a race car that will compete in Japan’s Super Taikyu endurance racing series.

Ignore the fact that this looks like a Toyota GR Yaris, because the most important bits are inside the car. The ‘M’ in M Concept alludes to the concept car’s mid-engine configuration.

Toyota’s brief press release about the car reads: “To further explore the potential of the GR Yaris, TGRR plans to compete in the Super Taikyu Series in the GR Yaris M Concept, which features an under-development, midship-mounted, 2.0-liter, inline 4-cylinder, turbocharged engine. The team aims to implement "driver-first" carmaking, in which cars are repeatedly driven to failure and then repaired in the extreme conditions of racing, and in which feedback from Morizo, professional drivers, and gentleman drivers is thoroughly incorporated.”

Photos provided by Toyota show glimpses of the new red-painted 2.0-litre 4-cylinder engine behind, while the car’s now-empty engine bay reveals bits of what the Japanese media say is a centre coupling, a component in Toyota's GR-Four system, meaning that the GR Yaris M Concept will still be 4WD.

They also said that the new 4-cylinder engine is referred to with the engine code G20E.

Toyota is unlikely to build its version of a Renault Clio V6, because the GR Yaris is supposed to be a road-legal world rally car, and none of those cars feature a mid-engine configuration.

What we think Toyota is doing is using the GR Yaris as a race-ready development mule for the Toyota MR2’s revival.

In July 2024, Toyota announced the development of a highly flexible 4-cylinder engine that can be mounted transversely or longitudinally, on front-engine and mid-engine cars, and can run on a variety of carbon-neutral fuels.

The Toyota MR2 was last sold in 2007.