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Toyota Supra Drag Races GR Yaris AWD Hot Hatch: 3-Liter vs. 1.6-Liter Turbo Surp

Small hot hatchbacks like the Fiesta ST failed in America, maybe because money is less of a problem than power and performance. But Toyota just built a pocket rocket called the GR Yaris, and it's quite exciting. Can it do more with less? We're about to find out thanks to a drag race between it and the ubiquitous GR Supra.
Toyota Supra Drag Races GR Yaris AWD Hot Hatch: 3-Liter vs. 1.6-Liter Turbo Surprise 4 photos
Photo: CarExpert/YouTube screenshot
Toyota Supra Drag Races GR Yaris AWD Hot Hatch: 3-Liter vs. 1.6-Liter Turbo SurpriseToyota Supra Drag Races GR Yaris AWD Hot Hatch: 3-Liter vs. 1.6-Liter Turbo SurpriseToyota Supra Drag Races GR Yaris AWD Hot Hatch: 3-Liter vs. 1.6-Liter Turbo Surprise
The GR Yaris has already made a notable drag race. At the hands of Carwow, it went up against the Honda Civic Type R and showed it could keep up with a much more powerful car. But that was in the wet, whereas this is in perfectly good Australian weather.

Let's look at the power deficit which the Yaris has to overcome. Like the Fiesta ST of old, this car has a small engine. It's a 1.6-liter 3-cylinder that's been turbocharged to 270 horsepower and 273 lb-ft (370 Nm) of torque. The car is what you'd call a homologation special, built so that this advantageous racing body would be allowed.

The World Rally Championship has given us a lot of these wonderful cars, such as the Audi Quattro, Ford RS200, and Lancia Delta. The GR Yaris is cut from a piece of cloth that also gave us the Celica GT-Four, but it's obviously still going to struggle against a Supra.

Making this slightly more balanced, the Supra appears to be a 2020 model, which BMW officially rates at 335 hp and 369 lb-ft (500 Nm) of torque. We've seen dyno tests that suggest otherwise. But at least on paper, the gap is 65 horsepower, which isn't insurmountable. A lot of it is going to ride on how well the on-demand AWD system in the Yaris works.

So what exactly happens? Well, the Yaris gets an amazing launch, one of the best we've seen out of a manual hot hatch. The Supra is obviously going to catch up and win the race, but the gap is only a couple of car lengths. The CarExpert drag race video below is also a comparison review. Apparently, these cars have a few things in common so do check it out.

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About the author: Mihnea Radu
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Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida.
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