Here’s The New Toyota (Or Lexus) Supercar Up Close

That Toyota is developing a new front-engined sports car as a basis for its next GT3 racing contender is no secret. Its long-bonneted silhouette has been popping up at racetracks and roads around the world for a couple of years now, but there’s been no official confirmation of its existence from the manufacturer. Until now, that is.

At this week’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, the car that’s rumoured to be called either the Toyota GR GT3 or Lexus LFR is undergoing further development in a highly public setting. While waiting for a passenger ride up the hill in a Rally2 GR Yaris, we managed to get a good look at both of the heavily camouflaged prototypes – the road car and GT3 competition car.

Running at Goodwood under the nondescript badge of ‘Toyota GT Concept’, both cars had any giveaway badging very carefully covered up. The 2022 GR GT3 static concept that served as a preview of the car cropped up at various points with both Toyota and Lexus branding, so we’re still none the wiser as to which badge it’ll eventually wear. What is noteworthy, though, is the air intake situated on the car’s haunches, just behind the side windows – a pretty clear nod to a similar feature on the Lexus LFA.

What we do know is that it’s set to be a front-engined GT car, very likely powered by a twin-turbo V8, something reinforced by the noises being made by the cars going up the hill. Toyota developed just such an engine for a high-performance F version of the Lexus LC, which was ultimately cancelled.

The road car lacks the giant rear wing of the GT3 version, but based on the aggressive front splitter, side skirts and rear diffuser, there’s likely lots of underbody aero at play. Up front, the camouflage pretty clearly hides Toyota’s new corporate front end, as seen on things like the Prius and C-HR+. It’s also running what look like massive vented carbon ceramic brake discs.

The GT3 version, meanwhile, naturally wears much more aggressive aero, as well as side-exit exhausts and a huge air intake in the bonnet. We can expect it to succeed the ageing Lexus RC-F GT3 as Toyota’s competitor in the wildly popular sports car racing category.

What Toyota still won’t give us is a timescale for when we’ll see the finished cars, although it’s long been expected that the GT3 version will make an appearance at some point during the 2026 racing season. At any rate, development is clearly pretty far advanced, so we shouldn’t have too long to wait.