When your boss happens to be the grandson of the company’s founder, Kiichirō Toyoda, and actively moonlights as a competitive race car driver under the alias “Morizo”, the corporate boardroom tends to a high-octane pit lane. Akio Toyoda is a genuine supercar enthusiast who has spent his tenure ensuring that Toyota‘s Gazoo Racing achievements actually bleed into street-legal products, making rival automotive executives sweating over mere emissions penalties look incredibly uninspired.
For the upcoming Goodwood Festival of Speed running from July 9 to 12, Toyota and Lexus are rolling up to the British countryside in absolute fighting shape, ready to drop the veil on a track-focused lineup that refuses to play nice.
The undisputed stars of the show are the road-going Toyota GR GT and its track-only sibling, the GR GT3. Instead of the usual downsized, corporate engines, these Japanese marvels pack a completely bespoke, freshly engineered 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 hybrid powertrain designed specifically for race homologation. Featuring a low center of gravity and lightweight chassis, these beasts will be actively torturing their tires up the famous, narrow, and unforgiving Goodwood hillclimb, testing their aero, agility, and acceleration while the crowd watches the drama unfold against dangerous barriers.
Meanwhile, Lexus is taking a slightly different, quieter, but equally aggressive path. Parked for inspection in the exclusive Supercar Paddock will be the latest evolution of the Lexus LFA Concept. Yes, it’s a fully electric prototype, which might cause some traditionalists to cry into their premium fuel cans, but it shares underlying tech and high-performance aspirations with its V8-powered GR siblings.
The philosophical backbone of this entire Japanese onslaught relies on “Shikinen Sengu”, an ancient Shinto ritual where a shrine is completely dismantled and rebuilt once a generation to perfect the art of craftsmanship. Toyota is applying this generational recycling to its sports cars, evolving past DNA into modern weapons.
To drive the point home, Toyoda is also bringing the Le Mans-winning GR010 Hybrid, the GR Yaris Rally, and the brutal DKR GR Hilux along with his factory drivers. It’s a “bye bye” to the industry’s boring transition to appliance-like mobility.
