• The Celica has an important rally heritage for Toyota, with turbocharged all-wheel-drive cars racing in the 1990s WRC.
  • The automaker has strongly hinted at a return for the Celica as well as the possibility of a reborn MR2.
  • WRC's new spaceframe rules mean that Toyota can run bodywork matching any production car, but currently it doesn't build anything that looks like the WRC27.

The Algarve region of Portugal, located at the southwestern tip of Europe, is an area of verdant beauty. There are gorgeous beaches on the coast, and further inland, you can find figs and oranges growing wild. Sometimes, however, it's possible to spot something even juicier.

Algarve is also the part of Portugal where the annual Rally de Portugal round of the WRC is held, and this week, a local rally fan named Marcio Pereira snapped some photos of a camouflaged Toyota rally prototype doing shakedown runs, which have made the rounds on social media. While there's nothing unusual about Toyota's tests, as many manufacturers come to try out their racing prototypes well ahead of next season, what's notable is that Toyota needs to develop a whole new car for 2027, as the changing rules mean that its Yaris-based factory rally car is out.

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What's special here is that the car in question is a flared-out, wild-looking coupe. WRC's new spaceframe regulations are designed to lure more competitors into the sport. The underpinnings are more standardized, with a tubular-frame safety cell and specified suspension and powertrain components. There's also a price cap that's half of what the current regulations set.

Even more interesting is the part about the allowed bodywork. Cars will no longer be derived from standard production cars. Instead, they will be allowed to be draped in either production-inspired designs or one-offs created just for rallying.

It's a little similar to the silhouette era of IMSA and other GT racing, when the cars sort of looked like, say, an Audi 90, but were total tube-frame monsters underneath. Thing is, if you're running a global car company, you want more than just some generic racing car with a Toyota badge on the front, you want something that looks like the cars people could actually buy.

There are some dimensional restrictions, so Toyota can't simply plop a RAV4 Halloween mask over top of this spaceframe. However, the choice to use a coupe body rather than a hatchback means that something's probably afoot. There's been so much hinting and winking recently about a return for the Celica and MR2 platforms. With the Supra heading into hibernation, Toyota needs a halo performance car.

The Celica has a long history with rally, as anyone who played any of the Sega Rally video games already knows. The Celica GT-Four (sold as the All-Trac in the United States) used turbocharged power and all-wheel drive to claw itself to two WRC Manufacturer's titles and multiple driver's titles.

So, it would make a great deal of sense for a GR Celica to be on the way shortly. Toyota executives were tight-lipped about the prototype, but indicated that it had already logged over a thousand miles of testing. It's sure to be ready for next year's WRC season. The question is, will a road-going version also arrive in 2027?

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Brendan McAleer
Contributing Editor
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels.