Gazoo Racing Sheds Toyota Name, But It’ll Keep Building ‘Ever-Better’ Cars

It wasn’t that long ago that nobody had really heard of Gazoo Racing, Toyota’s in-house motorsports and performance wing, but in the last decade, it’s dominated rallying and endurance racing and developed some of our absolute favourite roadgoing performance cars in the form of the GR Yaris, GR86 and GR Supra.

It’s arguably become such a recognisable brand in its own right that it no longer needs the Toyota name attached to it, and from today, that’ll officially be the case, because the division is being renamed from Toyota Gazoo Racing to simply Gazoo Racing.

The Gazoo name as a racing outfit traces its roots back to 2007 when Akio Toyoda, then the company’s executive vice president and now its chairman, wanted to compete in the Nürburgring 24 Hours. Toyota, then a much more buttoned-up company, didn’t sanction his participation as an official company activity and so, unable to use the Toyota name in the team, the entry was instead fielded under Team Gazoo, taking its name from an obscure used car sales website Toyota had hosted in the 1990s.

Come 2015, all of Toyota and Lexus’ racing activities were unified under the Toyota Gazoo Racing name, under which Toyota’s recaptured its enthusiast spirit and shone in motorsports.

Quite why the decision’s been taken to once again drop the Toyota name isn’t clear. It perhaps represents a confidence that the GR name can now stand alone as a performance brand, in a similar fashion to what Toyota’s doing with its upmarket Century brand in Asia. Either way, we’ve already seen the first fruits of this change. Unveiled last month, Toyota’s long-awaited GR GT sports car is being officially badged and marketed as simply the GR GT, with no Toyota branding anywhere.

The name change shouldn’t alter GR’s road car plans, as the company says Gazoo Racing “intends to continue making ever-better motorsports-bred cars.” Among those rumoured to be in development are a new MR2 and Celica as well as a next-gen GR86. It’ll keep up its various motorsport activities too, including its WRC effort, although its World Endurance Championship team is being rebranded under the Toyota Racing banner, losing any GR branding in the process.

It’s a curious name change, then, but one that hopefully will have only positive effects on Toyota’s ever-admirable commitment to motorsport and performance cars.