The ultimate rally car project the WRC is glad COVID killed
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The ultimate rally car project the WRC is glad COVID killed

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Toyota was unstoppable in the 2021 World Rally Championship, with an excellent 75% strike rate from 12 rallies. But in a scary proposition for its rivals, the Japanese marque had built a car for the final year of the previous regulations set which it believes was much faster and could feasibly have crushed the opposition completely. Here the story of its mothballed world-beater.

“It was probably a good thing for the World Rally Championship that this car never came to be.”

That’s quite a statement from Toyota’s WRC technical director Tom Fowler, but he’s most probably correct. Fowler is referring to an abandoned project that appeared likely to dominate the WRC in 2021, perhaps like no other car had ever achieved, potentially blowing rivals Hyundai and M-Sport-Ford completely out of the water.

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