With Toyota constantly pumping gas into its GR road-going performance lineup—the big news for 2023 involves the GR86 Cup one-make racer and the manual Supra 3.0—some fans expect the carmaker to add a fourth member to the family. And that desire has now manifested itself digitally in the form of a 2023 Toyota GR Camry.
As you can easily notice by comparing the past few generations of most vehicles on the market, the previous decade has seen the average new car design undoubtedly becoming more aggressive. And the example many people love to use when pointing this out is the Toyota Camry.
That’s because the Camry is America’s most popular mid-size sedan for twenty years thanks to assets such as great value for money and reliability rather than a sporty driving experience. So, seeing its maker gifting the four-door with increasingly meaner looks seems a bit inconsistent with the actual spirit of the vehicle.
Well, this rendering builds a credible go-fast image for the sedan. That’s because the digital artist known as Theottle used bits from the rally car-tied GR Yaris and the GR Corolla (hey, this one is in Formula Drift with 1,000+ hp) to build on the Nightshade Edition the Camry officially received for 2023. And you can witness the transformation in the YouTube clip below.
400 horsepower and a Lotus connection
And the widebody and gaping airflow manipulation pieces are not just there for the show, virtually speaking. You see, the pixel master also speaks of turbocharged V6 motivation for the fictional 2023 GR Camry. So, instead of the range-topping 300 hp 3.5L N/A V6 the Camry has to offer, this is envisioned with the supercharged 3.5L V6 Toyota builds, a 400 hp toy that also animates the Lotus Emira, which is the British brand’s final non-electrified model.
As far as the RPM (Real Project in the Making) Rating of this rendering goes, we’ll place it at 3/10. Sure, as discussing this GR Sienna rendering back in April demonstrates, we’d love to see a roomier member of the GR family. However, Toyota already seems to have built all the sporting credibility it needs with the current GR range.
Besides, the mid-size sedan class requires a superior level of sophistication to be added to the extra power, which would bring the price dangerously high and see the Japanese model competing against German rivals that have been at it for decades.
A brief history of Toyota’s Gazoo Racing division
Speaking of history, Toyota’s motorsport history goes back over six decades to its Round Australia Rally days of 1957. However, the company’s current go-fast arm is relatively young. Founded in 2007 as a covert motorsport operation, this grew quickly, evolving into the Gazoo Racing moniker used nowadays. And the racing activities pawed the way for all-out road-legal efforts in 2017, with the Mk V Supra introduced two years later being the division’s first exclusive vehicle.
The Supra, which shares its platform with the second-gen BMW Z4 and borrows the Bavarian roadster’s 2.0L turbo-four and 3.0L turbocharged straight-six engines, is built by Magna Steyr in Austria. The GR86 that came in 2020 uses the same architecture as the second-gen Subaru BRZ, with the two being built at the latter brand’s Gunma site in Japan.
Then we have the 2020-born GR Yaris and the 2022-introduced GR Corolla, which come to the world via the dedicated GR Factory inside Toyota’s Motomachi plant, where more traditional manufacturing techniques are employed.
In addition to the said models, Toyota also offers GR Sport baby upgrades, as well as fully-hardcore GRMN (Gazoo Racing, tuned by the Meister of the Nürburgring) editions. And since we’re talking hopes and dreams, we’ll remind you that the latter breed is expected to welcome the GRMN Supra, which should borrow the BMW M3/M4’s 500+ hp S58 twin-turbo 3.0L straight-six heart.
When is the Toyota gr Camry supercharged coming out?