Toyota has confirmed that the 986-horsepower (1,000 DIN hp) Gazoo Racing Super Sport Concept will enter production. At a press conference ahead of the 86th running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Gazoo Racing president Shigeki Tomoyama revealed that development has already begun, hinting at a return to the glory days of GT1 road cars.
Here’s why this is cool:
In the 1990s, Le Mans homologation rules mandated that the top level GT1 race cars needed to be based off of road cars. Automakers bent those rules, creating the race cars they wanted originally and then making a small number of road-going versions of those racers. That’s how the world got dream machines like the Toyota GT-One, Nissan R390 GT1, and Porsche 911 GT1, even if some were never really intended to be sold to the public.
R390 is one of my favorite cars. I’d love to see these come back.
This will be one absolutely mean machine. However I’m curious to see the price tag and how many will be produced. This reminds me of the LF-A and their want to produce something just because and not care if they make or lose money. Either way this is very sweet!!
Would this actually be classified as a GT1 car? I mean is this what will race against say the new Ford GT? This car resembles the likes of a lmp1/lmp2 cars more than the GT cars.
The idea is that the racing versions need to be based off a street car. So they make a low production “street car” to meet this rule. The car in these pictures won’t be racing anything, but they’ll use it as a platform for a race car.
On the subject, this is the R390 that I love. It’s street legal but they only made two, lol:
it is based of the chassis and engine etc of an lmp1 car, this car is going to be a production car, not race in any class really. the racing version of this car is an LMP1
