XCAR Tours Toyota Motorsport Gmbh

“We could easily be AMG-Toyota. No problem whatsoever. What do you want?” So boasts John Day, a longtime employee at Toyota Motorsport Gmbh (TMG). Currently based in Köln, Germany, TMG is responsible for designing, testing and building Toyota’s race cars. Its previous independent incarnation, Toyota Team Europe, was responsible for Toyota’s massive success in rallying during the ’70s and ’80s. When TTE was bought by Toyota and rechristened to TMG, it continued its successful rallying run through the ’90s before moving on to Le Mans and Formula One.

With TMG gearing up for its return to rally racing, XCAR went to the racing company’s lab and got a peek at its eye-watering stable of past creations, from one of Sainz and Moya’s prizewinning Celica GT-Four cars to a couple of rare babies like the MR2 222D Group S rally car prototype and the TS650, an anti-AMG Lexus IS with a twin-turbocharged 650hp engine.