Most Asian carmakers thrived in America, reporting greatly advanced first-quarter deliveries across the board. Naturally, Toyota was chief among them and hot on the heels of General Motors.
The worst-performing Japanese automaker was Mitsubishi, which only delivered a little over 28k units during the first three months of the year – and even they jumped almost 36% year-over-year. Mazda jumped 13.3% to over 100k examples, Subaru rose 6.7 percent compared to 2023 to nearly 153k units, Hyundai and Kia also get an honorable mention (almost 185k and over 179k, respectively), while the Nissan group surged to almost 253k vehicles (+7.2%), but these were just the tip of the iceberg. Meanwhile, American Honda jumped 17.3% to almost 334k units, and Toyota ran after GM (594k) with a beefy 20.3% surge to 565k examples. Naturally, the biggest Japanese automaker wants to keep up the good pace and even try to dethrone General Motors by the end of the year.
Their strategy, recently, has focused on beefing up the off-road SUV and truck roster – alongside the full-size Sequoia and Tundra now they also have the N400 Tacoma best-seller plus a trio of cool 4x4s: 2024 Lexus GX 550, the returning 2024 Toyota Land Cruiser, as well as the newly-introduced 2025 Toyota 4Runner which is scheduled to hit nationwide dealerships later this year during the fall season.
Obviously, once they're done with these SUVs and trucks, they should also take care of the crossovers and passenger cars in the lineup. We don't know about CUVs as they seem to be doing pretty well (RAV4 was the third best-selling nameplate in America behind Ford's F-Series and the Chevy Silverado during Q1 of 2024), but a recent scoop coming from a renowned Japanese news outlet gives us (very) interesting food for thought – a new generation Toyota GR86 might come for the 2026 or 2027 model year not just as an affordable two-door sports car but also with a hybrid four-door GR attitude!
Naturally, the imaginative realm of digital car content creators is hot on the heels of such reports, and the Halo oto channel on YouTube provides fresh automotive info corroborated with their virtual designs; now, there are new CGI ideas about this fresh GR86 idea. As always, the resident pixel master has worked out all the details regarding the hypothetical design project and gives us a modern Toyota fastback sedan, as seen from the traditional front and rear three-quarter POVs.
Even better, the host also comes with some technical details – if real, apparently, this 2027 Toyota GR86 Sport 4-Door model would share the GR Yaris and GR Corolla 1.6-liter G16E-GTS turbo inline-three mill, and the Japanese engineers will also electrify it for additional hybrid oomph, up to a combined total output of around 350 horsepower. So, what do you think?
Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution. Full profile
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