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Toyota GT86 engineer Tada recounts how sports car came to be

Because the Toyota GT86, Scion FR-S and Subaru BRZ coupes are now a reality, it's almost hard to imagine the struggle that had to happen within the large, conservative corporate structures at both automakers for the joint project to even get off of the ground.
Speaking to those struggles on Toyota UK's Toyota Blog, GT86 Chief Engineer Tetsuya Tada enlightens us with a recap of the sports car's earliest origins. For Tada, the first stages of the project must have seemed almost as dreamlike as the final product is to drive.
Said the Chief, "I had been working in the minivan department engineering new product, but a month after the meeting I was summoned. 'Forget about minivans,' they said, 'you are now working on the sports-car project.'"

Gazoo heads to the N"urburgring with Lexus LFA Code X

You'd be forgiven for thinking just because the Lexus LFA has ended its production run (it's been over a year now) that Toyota would have ceased its development. You'd be forgiven, but Gazoo Racing is here to tell you you'd still be wrong.
One of Toyota's many works racing teams, Gazoo is returning to the 24-hour endurance race at the Nürburgring this year with a trio of entries. One is based on the Toyota GT86 (which we know as the Scion FR-S), and one is essentially the same LFA that it's entered in years past. But the third vehicle is dubbed Code X.
It's also based on the LFA, but its 4.8-liter V10 engine has been bored out to 5.3 liters, raising its output to untold levels. It's got a full carbon-fiber chassis and a range of other enhancements that Gazoo isn't telling us about just yet, but they should turn the LFA Code X from a road-going supercar beyond a racecar and into a rolling research lab. Considering that Gazoo has been racing at the 'Ring since 2007 and fielding versions of the LFA there since 2008, it'll be interesting to see how the Code X version fares.

Akio Toyoda pledges return to WRC in 2017 with a Yaris

There have been rumors of Toyota returning to the World Rally Championship since the end of 2013, and a Yaris prepped by Toyota Motorsport in Germany has been caught on The Continent several times last year in testing. Akio Toyoda visited Rally Finland while we were there with Hyundai to watch a race up close, and he said that the passion people still had for Toyota's past exploits encouraged him. He finally answered the question about when they planned to enter the series, announcing in Tokyo that they'd line up for the season in 2017. The Japanese company, a legend in rallying, got into the sport in 1979 and left in 1999 after winning seven titles in ten years through the nineties with Carlos Sainz and Juha Kankkunen. The 2017 return is likely due to the regulation changes that year to allow more power than the roughly 300-horsepower in today's challengers and the switch to a fuel-flow formula to let manufacturers use different kinds of engines. Toyota has been sitting in on the WRC rules meetings, and the final slate of changes will be announced at the end of this year. The Yaris that's been testing is powered by a 1.6-liter, four-cylinder that meets current regulations, but we can expect it to change somewhat before it's race-ready. TMG will test the car for the next two years, then it will go up against fellow manufacturers Volkswagen, Hyundai, and Citroen, as well as Fords run by M-Sport. There's video of the Yaris running solo through the Belgian countryside above, and a gallery of the coming car below.