All signs point towards the GR Corolla being in its twilight years. Toyota’s raucous little hatchback with a trick all-wheel-drive system and proper differentials has been with us for roughly four years now, and it’s not going out quietly. The Toyota GRMN Corolla is what happens when you turn a modern hot hatch up to eleven. Every single thing about it is insane, and now we know that extends to the price tag.
First, a little backstory. When the GR Corolla was first announced, Toyota added a flourish to its compact hot hatch by way of the limited-run Morizo edition. With a rear seat delete, shorter gearing, stickier tires, and a variety of tweaks almost solely focused on performance, it felt pretty crazy. However, it didn’t bear the letters “GRMN,” Toyota’s designation for its most bonkers factory hot rods. With a new Corolla just around the corner, Toyota’s going all-out with the GRMN Corolla. Hide your WRXs, hide your Golf Rs because the top-dog Corolla is serious stuff.
Like the Morizo Edition, the GRMN Corolla ditches its rear seat, rolls on Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires, and gets a carbon fiber roof. Unlike the Morizo, it takes full advantage of years of ongoing development. Its carbon fiber hood and aggressively vented front fenders were forged through the crucible of motorsport, and new dampers and bump stops, along with final aerodynamic tweaks, were tuned on the Nürburgring. There’s an intercooler sprayer to keep a lid on intake air temperature, unique all-wheel-drive system and steering tuning, and all the tweaks you’d get on a new GR Corolla compared to the original. More structural adhesives, more cooling, the works. Add in a torque boost from 295 lb.-ft. to 302 lb.-ft., and the result is the wildest Corolla yet.
The wildest thing about the GRMN Corolla, however, might be the price. Oh my word, is it ever expensive. This limited-run Corolla starts at $64,360 before any freight charges or other fees. That’s $280 more than the MSRP of a Ford Mustang Dark Horse and $1,615 more than a stick-shift GR Supra 3.0 Premium. You can buy two Honda Civic Si sedans for the price of the GRMN Corolla, or a pair of Mazda MX-5s. That’s simply an enormous sum of money for a 300-horsepower sport compact car with no rear seats.
It’s also worth mentioning that a standard GR Corolla carries a pre-freight MSRP of $40,520, which is some $23,840 or more than one entire Corolla LE sedan cheaper than the GRMN Corolla. Think about that for a second: You could have a largely similar car and buy your parents or grandparents or adult child a nice economical commuter car for just about the price of the top-dog Corolla.
Perhaps that’s part of the reason why Toyota is only planning on building 730 GRMN Corollas for the entire world. Out of the roughly 8.3 billion people on this planet, only around 0.00000879 percent of them live in a market that will get the GRMN Corolla and are both well-heeled and wild enough to spend $64,360 plus freight on a stripped-out two-seat hatchback.
Top graphic image: Toyota
IT’S A FUCKING…COROLLA!
An econobox! I will never, ever understand any of these souped up Corollas, because of the model name…the Corolla has been one of the cheapest econoboxes for decades. It’s very reliable and good as a…car. I absolutely cannot separate that from something souped up (No soup for you! Come back, 1 year! ha ha). IT’S STILL A… COROLLA!!! Also, what a fucking ripoff/highway robbery for this.
GRMN? What? Gremlin? Stupid…
Huh? AMC Gremlin? Ok, will take one of those…
Toyota really needs to fire their letters guy. First it was TuRD, then it was GuRr, not as bad but certainly not good. And now we have GRuMmaN. What is this? A mail truck?
This insanity kind of makes me want a sub-$25K plain-jane Corolla hatchback instead. Which probably isn’t an effect that Toyota itself minds.
Sadly, it’s only available with a CVT now. 🙁
Can anyone else think of another 2-seat, 4-door, production car? Off the top of my head I sure can’t.
There’s a Taycan variant that does that, the top line Turbo GT
Taycan Turbo GT with Weisssach package
The extra ‘s’ is for speed, I guess
Maybe the high price is also market testing for the rumoured MR2 successor? If people will pay over $64000 for a 300hp two-seater hatchback, they’ll certainly pay that much for a ~400hp two-seater sportscar.
Seven hundred thirty?!
Ugh. Somehow I’m not optimistic any will actually be sold at MSRP.
With no rear seats, Toyota could have reduced the price to about $64,355, and saved a few ounces, by eliminating the rear grab handles in the roof lining.
And it’s still a Corolla base. I get the GR Corolla at the lower end, but at this price for some marketing amount of additional power and less practicality that then puts it in competition with faster, better cars, all I can see these for is people with more money than sense swinging their wallets. Most of them will probably not be driven beyond local car shows before being sold off when it’s no longer the freshest new thing.
Hot hatches were cool because they were affordable fun. That’s a LOT of money for a massaged Corolla.
Nothing is affordable now.
Its neat, I’m glad it exists. But for some reason I find it less interesting than the GR Corolla, and I’m not interested by it.