Drooling over the recently-unveiled Toyota GR Corolla? Well, the bad news is that you’ll probably have to drool for quite a bit longer… and that’s only if it even makes its way into Malaysia.
Speaking to Carscoops, a Toyota spokesperson told the publication that the company will only be building 8,600 GR Corollas for its first production year, with only 2,000 of those earmarked for global markets. The rest are all reserved for the North America continent, and even that feels too little.
While the carmaker did not explicitly mention a hard cap on production limits for the GR Corolla, Toyota North America Vice President of Marketing Mike Tripp told Road & Track last week that they intend to make “one too few” of them in order to maintain exclusivity on one of their most desirable models in recent times.
According to Carscoops, the production figure is so limited that most dealerships in the United States will only be allocated three units of the Toyota GR Corolla – with no pricing and timing details available yet.
RELATED: The Toyota GR Corolla is a mean-looking Type R slayer with rally-bred AWD
It’s a similar story for the highly-popular Toyota GR Yaris, which is reportedly already sold out globally until at least 2023. The 200 or so units that were initially allocated for Malaysia have also all been spoken for within weeks of its introduction here on our shores.
For the GR Yaris, orders have been so overwhelming that the Motomachi production facility in Japan is having a tough time keeping up with the demand. However, Tripp says that the production limit for the GR Corolla has nothing to do with the limitations at the plant.
“I wouldn’t say the limiting factor on these vehicles is our ability to produce them,” he said. “It’s being very careful to make sure that we maintain the niche credibility.”
ALSO READ: Overwhelming demand for GR Yaris in Australia, Toyota stops taking orders
The GR Corolla is pretty much like a bigger GR Yaris, bringing the same successful formula onto the five-door Corolla hatchback body style. It’s powered by the same 1.6-litre turbocharged three-cylinder engine and six-speed manual gearbox, but output is bumped up significantly to 304 hp and 370 Nm of torque.
It’s also equipped with the same GR-Four all-wheel drive system, which allows power delivery to be split between 60:40, 30:70, or 50:50 between the front and rear axles depending on the driving modes.
Will we be seeing any of the 2,000 global units here in Malaysia, then? We can’t know for sure, but seeing that we’re the only few countries in the world aside from Japan with full-blown GR Garages, we’d say that there’s at least half a chance… no matter how slim (or maybe we’re just wish-casting at this point).
Even if it does, however, expect allocations to be even more limited than the GR Yaris here in Malaysia, seeing that there’s only 2,000 of them to go around the rest of the world – at least for the first year.
