Toyota Australia has now sold more than 2200 GR Yaris and GR Yaris Rallye hot hatches, and hopes to have the vast majority in owner’s hands by the end of 2021.
That’s likely to be all the stock Toyota will sell this year, despite rampant demand.
“We can confirm that Toyota currently has over 2200 orders including both GR Yaris and GR Yaris Rallye in our system,” the company said this week.
“Based on our current supply schedule, we are expecting more than 2000 of these orders will be fulfilled in 2021, with a small percentage to be fulfilled in early 2022.”
The good news for keen-to-buy enthusiasts who haven’t yet put money down is one or more shipments of the rally-inspired pocket rockets are expected to arrive from Japan in the second half of this year.
The bad news is that anyone who orders either variant now will almost certainly be waiting until some time into 2022 to take their delivery.
“We’re endeavouring to get further allocation of the GR Rallye and standard GR in the second half of the year. We expect that those deliveries wouldn’t be until 2022 [though] this is not a limited car,” Toyota vice-president of sales and marketing, Sean Hanley, told us.
“We will bring this car in in terms of demand. It’s a special vehicle that is quite niche I think.”
As we reported, Toyota sold out the first 1000 GR Yaris models in less than one week after it went on sale last September.
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The company sensationally sold this batch for $39,950 drive-away, equating to a saving over the RRP of somewhere in the vicinity of $14,000.
It then sold a further 100 units at $44,950 drive-away, before reverting to the official list price of $49,500 plus a few extra grand in on-road costs.
“There was a deeper strategic direction in the development of that program. And that was to launch the GR brand in Australia,” Hanley explained when we asked him about the rationale for that decision.
“There’s many ways you can invest in a brand. It could be through traditional marketing, or it can be by putting product in the hands of the people, the people who love the product.
“We chose on this occasion to put it in the hands of enthusiasts that love performance cars. I mean, you cannot, you cannot measure the brand credibility you get from word of mouth.”
In other words, rather than marketing, put that budget into discounting the cars and build an army of diehards.
The GR Yaris Rallye that launched this week builds on the ’regular’ GR Yaris but adds better Michelin Pilot Sport 4S rubber, BBS forged alloy wheels, stiffer springs and anti-roll bars, torsen diffs front and rear, and numbered plaques.
The first 200 vehicles sold for a special price of $56,200 drive-away before reverting to a sticker price of $54,500 before on-road costs.
All GR Yaris models share a bonkers 200kW/370Nm 1.6-litre three-cylinder turbo engine, a six-speed manual gearbox, and variable all-wheel drive.
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