Toyota opens GR Garage museum in Texas tracing its racing history

Toyota has opened a GR Garage Experience Center near its Toyota Experience Center in Plano, Texas, gathering a collection of racing cars that spans the company's motorsport history from the 1950s to the present day. The facility is decorated with racing memorabilia, suspension components and die-cast cars, and reads as part museum, part shrine to the brand's racing past.

Where Toyota's international racing effort started

The oldest machine on display is a 1957 Toyopet Crown that entered the Mobilgas Round Australia Rally, a 19-day endurance event covering thousands of miles of Australian terrain. The Crown finished 47th overall and third among foreign entries, and Toyota says the experience exposed weaknesses it addressed in later vehicles.

The 2000GT on show is one of only three cars prepared for SCCA competition in 1968, developed with American racer and builder Carroll Shelby. Its 2.0-litre inline-six made roughly 200 horsepower in racing trim, and Scooter Patrick drove the No. 33 car to second in the C-Production championship standings.

Prototypes and desert trucks

The 1986 Celica GTO, built by Dan Gurney's All American Racers, used a tube-frame chassis, rear-wheel drive and a turbocharged inline-four making as much as 600 horsepower. Chris Cord and Toyota won the IMSA GTO drivers' and manufacturers' titles with it in 1987.

Ivan Stewart's red-and-white PPI Toyota truck represents a desert racing career of 84 victories and 10 championships, including 17 Baja 500 wins and three Baja 1000 victories. Stewart earned the Ironman nickname by tackling gruelling desert events without a co-driver.

The Eagle MkIII, another All American Racers project, ran in IMSA's GTP category with a turbocharged inline-four producing more than 800 horsepower. With Juan Manuel Fangio II driving, Toyota took consecutive IMSA GTP manufacturers' championships in 1992 and 1993, and the Eagle won 17 consecutive races at one point.

Lexus, Le Mans and the modern GT cars

The collection includes a Lexus LFA Nürburgring race car from 2012, part of the early Gazoo Racing effort in Nürburgring endurance events, and a road-spec LFA Nürburgring Package limited to 50 examples. One of those lapped the Nürburgring in 7:14.64 in 2011. A Supra MkIV beside it is the car Toyota master driver Hiromu Naruse used to teach Akio Toyoda to drive quickly.

The 2015 TS040 Hybrid paired a 3.7-litre V-8 with electric motors driving both axles for approximately 1000 horsepower, storing recovered braking energy in supercapacitors rather than conventional batteries. Toyota won the World Endurance Championship manufacturers' and drivers' titles with the car in 2014 before fielding a heavily revised version for 2015.

More recent machinery includes the Lexus RC F GT3, whose 5.4-litre V-8 carried Vasser Sullivan Racing to the 2023 GTD Pro championship and a class win at the 2024 12 Hours of Sebring. The RC F's final year in IMSA was 2026, and the GR GT3 race car replaces it at the 24 Hours of Daytona in January.

The GR Supra GT4 is a customer racing car that shares its 3.0-litre turbocharged inline-six with the road-going Supra and made approximately 430 horsepower in initial specification, subject to balance-of-performance rules. The GR86 Cup Car keeps the production model's 2.4-litre flat-four but swaps the manual for a six-speed sequential gearbox for Toyota's single-make GR Cup series, which began in 2023. The GR Corolla TC, built for SRO's TC America, starts with the 300-hp turbocharged 1.6-litre three-cylinder and GR-Four all-wheel drive, and keeps the production car's eight-speed automatic alongside upgraded suspension, Alcon brakes, a roll cage and aerodynamic bodywork.

A museum that doubles as a parts bin

The mix on show is unusual for a manufacturer heritage collection because so much of it is competition machinery rather than concept cars or one-off showpieces. For Toyota, the through-line is the claim that racing fed back into road cars, a philosophy the company ties to Akio Toyoda's personal involvement in racing and vehicle development.

Toyota has not announced Australian availability or pricing for the GR Garage Experience Center, since the facility sits beside its Texas experience centre.

Audi Australia has reworked the 2027 A5 Sedan and Avant range so that the plug-in hybrid e-hybrid versions carry the line-up, with the non-hybrid TFSI 150kW and TFSI 200kW quattro variants no longer listed in the updated specification guide. The 2027 A5 and S5 are now available to order.

Audi Australia product planning manager Esther Choi said the majority of A5 buyers had been choosing the plug-in e-hybrid anyway, and that the 200kW quattro is now customer order only. The brand frames the change as a deliberate Australian strategy built around performance and hybridisation rather than a retreat from petrol power.

What changed in the 2027 A5 line-up

The TFSI 150kW variant is absent from the revised spec guide, and the TFSI 200kW quattro, the direct successor to the A4 45 TFSI quattro, has moved to customer order only. Audi Australia head of product Matthew Dale said that arrangement keeps the car available for traditionalists who specifically want it.

The e-hybrid versions are quoted at 270kW, which Audi Australia says delivers almost S5 levels of performance alongside pure electric running around town and hybrid operation on longer trips. That combination is what dealers say is drawing buyers in, according to Dale.

Why Audi Australia made the call

Choi said the A4 45 TFSI quattro had accounted for more than 50 per cent of volume when the previous generation launched, which made plug-in hybrid a step into unknown territory for the brand locally. Audi positioned the e-hybrid alongside the 200kW quattro to offer more value and convert those buyers, and she said the sales numbers show it worked.

Dale described the approach as an intentional Australian market strategy to cement the brand's footprint without alienating existing customers, and said the PHEV has now taken over the exact position the A4 45 TFSI quattro once held. He said the outcome has come out positively and as planned.

The logic is straightforward: when the plug-in outsells the petrol it replaces, keeping a low-volume petrol variant in stock ties up dealer inventory for little return. Holding it as a customer order costs Audi Australia almost nothing and keeps a loyal buyer base on side.

What is still unconfirmed

Audi Australia has not announced Australian pricing for the 2027 A5 range in the material available, so the cost of the revised line-up has not been confirmed.

Electric-only range for the A5 e-hybrid has also not been quoted, and no test cycle (WLTP, EPA or otherwise) has been specified for the Australian figures. Buyers comparing the e-hybrid on range will need to wait for those numbers to be published.

What it means for A5 buyers

Anyone wanting a conventional petrol A5 in Australia now faces a narrower path: the 150kW version is off the guide, and the 200kW quattro has to be ordered rather than picked from stock. The e-hybrid becomes the default choice in the range, which suits drivers who want electric running for commuting and petrol backup for longer trips.

Audi Australia says it is always adjusting the range to suit the market, so the current line-up should be read as a snapshot rather than a permanent settlement. For now, the plug-in is the A5 that Audi Australia expects most buyers to take.