Road Legal Toyota Gt One

To their credit, Toyota used a large windshield wiper in their GT1 road car. But that`s about the only concession to reality. Only two GT-Ones were built for the road; Both were assembled from spare parts, as Toyota never intended to sell them and still owns both copies. That`s good, because they`re completely impractical, even by super sports car standards. The two roadworthy GT-Ones were assembled by Toyota Motorsport in Germany, and the Toyota representative who escorted me into the storage room did not believe that this particular car had ever left the driveway of the factory. It would be a real shame if it didn`t seem impassable on normal roads most of the time. Forget about the ergonomics of the interior – the Toyota GT-One is so low on the floor that only half my wife`s height could fit 6.5 feet lower. If you ever took the GT-One out into the world, it would center or ruin the lower body in no time. The inside of the right-hand drive is an ergonomic nightmare straight out of the Toyota parts container.

Windows cannot be opened, an entire button bar is hidden behind the proportionally huge car steering wheel, and the six-speed gearbox shifter is traditionally on the driver`s right knee. There`s a lighter but no ashtray, which doesn`t make sense for a car built before the current ubiquity of smartphones. Still, there`s still something intriguing about the fully padded brown leather interior of a car that seems to come off the Mulsanne straight. Although a homologation requirement of 25 cars was announced to compete in the 1997 FIA GT Championship (with one road car completed before the first race and the rest starting twelve months after the end of the championship), the 24 Hours of Le Mans (which was not part of the FIA series) did not impose such a restriction. Instead, the organisers of Le Mans (the Automobile Club de l`Ouest) adhered to the one-on-road car rule. While the current Le Mans series has since reverted to the idea that its premier class should be based on roadworthy hypercars, the rules, as similar, are much more flexible. Only the powertrain really needs to be used in a road car now, it`s tinkered stars like the Toyota GT-One that ruined the idea of special full homologation once and for all by being too good. What is it for an inheritance? A great irony is that Toyota, the world`s leading supplier of cars as ordinary as the Camry and RAV4, has also spawned some of the craziest motorsport programs in history, with a particular focus on finding flaws. Yet one project has pushed the boundaries further than any other and is therefore Toyota`s craziest «road engine» ever built: its 1998 GT1 class homologation special, codenamed TS020 and labeled Toyota GT-One. In the final stages of the race, the GT-One of Ukyo Katayama, Keiichi Tsuchiya and Toshio Suzuki showed promise in second place before the final pit stops. A puncture at the left rear destroyed all hopes of first place.

With a lot of luck, the car was brought back to the pits and then crossed the finish line in second place. After another racing appearance at the Fuji 1000, all GT-One cars entered the museum. Why Toyota built two road cars instead of one will likely remain a mystery. Perhaps to be able to show a vehicle both at the headquarters in Japan and at the motorsport headquarters in Cologne. After the Le Mans races, the company turned to the Formula 1 factory. To this end, the GT-One test chassis has been released to test engine and chassis parts for the latest Formula 1 car. Only one of the seven examples built is privately owned. Photos: Toyota, Matthias Kierse One of the strangest requirements for GT1 cars was the integration of a trunk in the road and racing versions. You had to be able to put a standard suitcase in the trunk of a GT1 car as strange proof that there is a link with the road. On the Toyota GT-One, there is no hatch for the trunk, a trick developed by Mercedes to save weight and improve aerodynamics. But Toyota went further by eliminating the trunk altogether, arguing that the empty fuel tank could theoretically accommodate a suitcase. Surprisingly, regulators bought it.

Nothing in the rules said that you actually had to be able to put a suitcase in the «trunk», only that it had to fit. The other road car went to Le Mans with the Toyota team to seek FIA approval it received, and currently lives in a museum in Japan. Incredibly, the entire project ended unceremoniously – although it was terribly fast, all three racing versions stumbled on their debut at the 1998 24 Hours of Le Mans with only one ninth place after an accident and mechanical damage. After the race, the FIA completely changed the 1999 regulations to eliminate many of these strange road car requirements and push these first track machines into their own prototype category – hence why you`ll see some road-legal Mercedes CLK GTR and Porsche 911 GT1 road cars. Cars that were developed long before the change. and not a single Toyota GT-One. At the time, the rules of the GT1 class stipulated that there had to be a road version of a competing car – but the book was extremely vague, like many, and the homologation deadline was not very strict. The convoluted situation was the result of a large-scale reorganisation underway in international endurance racing in the 1990s, in which the GT1 class briefly evolved from a competition between racing versions of powerful sports cars to bespoke prototypes with a few ironic «road versions» such as the Porsche 911 GT1 and the Mercedes CLK GTR.