The reigning world rally champions have opted for a bold new matte black livery, which replaces its traditional red, white and black colours that have been a mainstay since Toyota returned to the WRC in 2017.
A similar colour scheme featuring Toyota’s GR branding will adorn the Japanese brand’s GR010 Hypercar entries in the 2024 World Endurance Championship.
"Until now it was red and white because it represented Japan, but there are many cars with similar colours, so we asked for a change," said Toyota president Akio Toyoda.
Last month Toyota announced an unchanged WRC driver line-up to pilot the GR Yaris next season. However, newly crowned two-time world rally champion Kalle Rovanpera will join Sebastien Ogier in competing in only a partial campaign.
This year’s title runner-up Elfyn Evans is set to lead the team’s charge alongside Takamoto Katsuta.
While the GR Yaris was the car to beat this year winning nine of the 13 rounds, Toyota is planning to bring upgrades for the 2024 season.
“I think we are in quite a good situation where we don’t have something you would have to define specifically as a weakness that needs emergency attention, but of course there is still things we would like to improve,” Toyota’s technical director Tom Fowler told Motorsport.com.
“We have a plan for next season already in place to bring some upgrades and it is difficult to say too much about those at the moment.
“For sure, we see that the main situation now is generally uncomfortable performance compared to Hyundai at the moment in the sense that in every type of condition we are very close. It is fair to say you never know at which rally which will be the best performing car between the Toyota and the Hyundai. We want to change that.
“We are looking to add performance to the car all of the time in terms of work that really needs proper development or a [homologation] joker application.
“Of course we are always working on small details of reliability but in terms of upgrade packages we are not expecting to do anything.”
Toyota’s WRC rivals Hyundai and M-Sport-Ford are set to unveil their respective i20 N and Puma Rally1 cars in the new year. M-Sport will reveal its Puma at the Autosport International Show from 11-14 January.
