2023 Toyota GR Corolla – The Greatest Hatch In U.S.?

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2023 Toyota GR Corolla – What’s up, everybody? Today Toyota has flown me out to Utah to drive its new 2023 Toyota GR Corolla out on the track. This is a car that We have been dying to operate for years. Before it even existed because over in Europe, they sold a version of this car called the gr Yaris. It was the same engine and drivetrain you got in this car but in the much smaller Yaris, which they no longer sell in America.

2023 Toyota GR Corolla Color

2023 Toyota GR Corolla Color

Now they have brought the train over in a corolla because Americans are much more likely to buy a larger compact car like the corolla than something like the Yaris, and We think the recipe is going to work because we have not seen a hot hatch quite like this in a long time.

What You Have to Get From 2023 Toyota GR Corolla

Exterior

The one that I’m driving here, this black model, is the core which is the base version of the 2023 Toyota GR Corolla. It’s going to come in three trims, so you’ve got your core, the circuit edition for 2023 only, and the Mario edition, which is the most track-focused.

We’ll focus on that a little later; we have similar front-end styling as the other 2023 Toyota GR Corolla with those cool headlights, but this is wider. They gave it these cool wide fender flares that give it that old-school 80s group b rally look. We love it. We love this big grill at the bottom with the little gazoo racing badge, and I also love these wheels. They look like these cool.

I think it’s 15 spoke. We’ve got 18-inch wheels and 235 tires. These are Michelin pilot sport four tires, which are severe tires if you know anything about tires, but if you step up to the Maurizio edition, you can get sticky cup twos that are just great again. I love these boxy fender flares. They look so cool

this is an all-wheel drive car, so you have your 2023 Toyota GR Corolla badge in there in the sill, which is quite remarkable, and then here at the back, you can see that width look how wide this looks compared to a standard corolla hatchback now down here we have three exhaust pipes which is such a unique thing you don’t see three exhaust pipes very often this um center one is going to be open at idle at speeds of under 20 miles an hour and then when you get above 4 500 rpm

it kicks open again to give you a little bit more noise. We love the way that this little engine sounds. We’ll talk a little bit about more than more on the road. Everything else will be pretty close to what you’re going to get in an ordinary corolla hatchback, so if you didn’t love the size of the corolla hatchback before, they didn’t do anything to it here.

This trunk is not very big. It is not very deep. Well, you’ve got your tire inflation kit, so you do not get a spare in here, so if you have a lot of stuff to haul around, this is not the largest vehicle in this class that you can get. The honda civic hatchback will be significantly larger than this; ditto for the back seat. I’ve found that the opening for the corolla hatchback is tiny. The 2023 Toyota GR Corolla door doesn’t open that wide, which is still very far forward.

Interior

If you’re a much larger person trying to get back here, it is not the most comfortable thing; as you can see, we don’t have a ton of legroom sitting behind me. It is just okay, not great. Remember, this is a compact car. Still, a corolla that we’re talking about,t this is all about performance, not luxury and comfort we did.

Weave a little 12-volt outlet here and a little usbc. So that you can charge up your devices, and then we have just kind of like this sill here where We guess you could put a phone or something like that.

if you’re the 2023 Toyota GR Corolla rear passenger, but to save weight, they didn’t put anything that kind of opens or closes fancy, and there are no air vents back here either now; if you get the murizo edition, you are going to lose the back seat of this car completely there’s just a big strut brace on the back, and you cannot put any kids or anything else in the back you do get a lot of cargo space though.

2023 Toyota GR Corolla Interior

2023 Toyota GR Corolla Interior

so now let’s go ahead and talk about the front because we have the core we’ve got these cloth seats which We have no problem with We to think they look nice we’ve got the gr logo here as well they are very nicely bolstered as well they’re very comfortable you can get heated seats as part of a package on this core model We believe they’re standard on the circuit edition, but if you step up to the circuit edition or the meriza these seats are going to become suede

so a little bit nicer than the base seats that we’re going to get on the core here, we’ve got our 2023 Toyota GR Corolla to start stop button, so I’m going to go ahead and push the clutch because this car is, of course, a manual transmission, and you’re going to see something new here on corolla

now other corollas We believe are going to get this as well, but we have this nice 12.3-inch information display instead of a normal gauge cluster, so if We can clear all of the notifications on it, you can see that we have that tachometer; let me go ahead and give it a rev it doesn’t love revving when it’s just in neutral but trust me that’s not a problem when you’re out on the road driving it you’ve got your boost gauge there to the left, and you have your traction

so this will show you where the power will come from from the all-wheel drive system. There we do have some drive modes down here in front of the shifter as well as our traction control button, so the drive modes are pretty cool; so right now,

We are in normal eco and are going to go ahead and look the same, but if We go ahead and put it in sport mode now you’re going to see the tachometer is going to change significantly. Hence, it’s a little bit easier to read out on the track, and you also have a custom mode as well

now; you can change up what information is on here as well, so if you don’t want it to be a big speedo, you can have different settings; you can change what is on the left and the right. We haven’t had much time to play around with this, but this makes it feel very premium, so I’m glad they did this with other vehicles like the Hyundai Veloster, Elantra, and Kona.

It is nice to see 2023 Toyota GR Corolla go and put some nice digital gauges in this car. We think they look cool; we also have Toyota’s newest 8-inch touchscreen, which has Toyota’s latest software.

unfortunately, all the buttons on the side to get like shortcuts to maps and things like that are gone, but it’s not like a huge hindrance. You still have a nice volume knob, but We did like having those physical buttons to get to stuff quickly

You still have physical climate controls though it is automatic, only single zone automatic. It’s not dual-zone; remember, it’s just a corolla. We have a JBL audio system that We believe comes as part of the tech package on this car, so you’re only going to get six speakers.

Based on the core, the JBL will upgrade it to eight speakers. Get the 2023 Toyota GR Corolla murizo to cut weight. It’s going to drop you down to just two speakers in the front, so now down here, we have our gr shifter, so this shifter is going to look different if you get the murizo edition or the circuit edition, but this is what it looks like here on the core with this little gr logo it’s more of a circular ball the other one is kind of more of an oval in front of it we have our heated seat controls as well

as our qi wireless charger, which is a little bit far forward. There’s not a lot of space to put stuff on it besides a phone. We already mentioned the drive mode selector, and down here is the cool knob, so this is usually your sport eco normal drive mode selector on a normal corolla. Still, here on the 2023 Toyota GR Corolla, you can use this to send the power differently.

2023 Toyota GR Corolla Cargo Space

2023 Toyota GR Corolla Cargo Space

so you can have more power going to the front, a 50-50 split with the track button, or you turn it that way to get more power to the rear, which is super easy, and you can do it on the fly. We will show you more when we get the corolla out on the road, so We think I’ve done enough talking about the corolla on the interior.

Let’s go out and drive this thing, and last, but not least, We wanted to show you the marizo edition, only 500 units for this year, but this is the most extreme version of the corolla. We’ve got this cool sort of metallic matte paint on it that looks cool big difference here on the tires and Michelin pilot cup twos.

You can see how sticky these are with forged wheels for better weight reduction and lower center of gravity because we’ve got a carbon fiber roof up here. This is chopped carbon fiber, not woven as you’d see on some supercars; inside, you’re going to see some differences as well, including these suede seats instead of the cloth that We showed you earlier

on the core model. We also have red seat belts. These are cool as well. You also get suede on the shifter. This is a different shifter than the core model; it has Akio Toyota’s signature on it as well. We really like the feel of this, and the ratios are different here on the morizo as well; you’ve got this suede steering wheel up here with your midnight marker in red this is a nice feeling steering wheel as well

I like the suede here. Still, We think the biggest thing, and maybe the reason why you wouldn’t want to buy the morizo edition, is that there is no back seat. This is all just a shelf; you have this little bar to stop stuff from rolling forward, but you can see the rear seat has been completely deleted; we have this strut bar across the side, so this is strictly a two-seater car.

2023 Toyota GR Corolla Specification

let’s get the 2023 Toyota GR Corolla out on the road, and just like with the supra, I’m not really on the road; I’m kind of on these little back roads here at this race track in Utah, but it is going to give me an excellent chance to drive the corolla. Still, just kind of talk to you about the different specs that you can expect to see from this car, so under the hood, we’ve got a 1.6-liter turbocharged three-cylinder engine; now this is huge because this is the engine that debuted in the gr Yaris that all of my European colleagues.

2023 Toyota GR Corolla Engine

2023 Toyota GR Corolla Engine

were simply raving over they were like, oh, this engine is so good, the rs is so good you’re going to love it hahaha, it sucks that you can’t have it well now we can have it only in a corolla. It’s pretty much the same engine, and it is mated to a six-speed manual transmission only with rev-matching. There is no automatic or dual-clutch option on this 2023 Toyota GR Corolla, which is excellent in the version that We are driving, so in the core and the circuit versions,

that’s the base and the middle trim level. You’re going to get 300 horsepower and 273 pound-feet of torque with 25.2 psi of boost from the turbo, which is quite a lot for a stock from the factory car now if you opt for the marizo edition that is the most track-oriented version of this car you’re going to get more torque it’s going to go from 273 to 295 pound-feet of torque

now that might not sound like such a vast difference oh they left the horsepower the same all they did was increase the torque. Well later in this video, I’m going to drive the meriza, and we’re going to see that that torque number is a big deal as is the weight which I’ll talk a little bit about more in just a little bit, so you’re going to get 26.3 psi in the meriza compared to 25.2 in this car no matter which corolla 2023 Toyota GR Corolla you choose you’re going to get all-wheel drive

this is huge for this segment because you’ve got the golf r with all-wheel purpose, um, but it’s pretty expensive; then you have the civic type r, which is a front-wheel drive, and you have the Hyundai Elantra end, which is not a hatchback, but it is also front-wheel drive, but this is a unique all-wheel drive system so you can split it three different ways

you can have 60 of the torque going to the front and 40 to the rear now; that’s going to be great if you’re driving this in any kind of bad weather, snow etc. just stick it in 60 40 modes, and now you’ve got a ton of grip going to the front wheels if you want to put it into its track mode that’s a 50 50 power split so 50 of the power to the front 50 percent to the rear and it’s going to give you a little bit more balanced feel to set the quickest lap times but the absolute most remarkable thing that this all-wheel drive system does is you can split the power 30, 70

so now you’re having 70 going to the rear, so this is going to feel a lot more like a rear-wheel drive vehicle now, the site has offered something like this in the past, but this version in this Toyota is just really, really cool, so now I’m at the straight portion of the road, so We can go ahead and show you what 0-60 is like in this car with the all-wheel drive I’m going to go ahead and put it into 50 50 track because We think that’s going to get off

so far. We will have to borrow this car for a week to see if this is the case but so far from this experience. We don’t think that the 2023 Toyota GR Corolla will beat you up as the apex did, and that is something. We were apprehensive about this car, so if you are going to drive it every day. We think you should stick with this core or step up to the circuit edition. You’re going to get 21 mpg in the city and 28 on highway 24 combined; not bad considering this car has 300 horsepower.

Price of 2023 Toyota GR Corolla

if you’re thinking about getting the morizo, you also get a stiffer spring rate on the suspension. You get Michelin pilot sport cup 2 tires which are like the stuff you get on like z06s and 911 gt3 RSS. so really heavy rubber on that, but you’re not going to want to be driving that like in the winter or in the rain or anything like that you get the forged carbon roof which you also get on the circuit edition. It’s going to save about a hundred pounds.

2023 Toyota GR Corolla Price

2023 Toyota GR Corolla Price

if you have to ask me now, having driven all three back to back to back on a race track in a row, if the morizo edition is worth $50,000 because that’s what it costs, um my easy answer is yes. my hands are trembling. After all, this is the best hatchback I’ve ever driven. The end, all right, so that was the 2023 Toyota GR Corolla, and I’m sure at this point you’re dying to know how much this fantastic three-cylinder turbo all-wheel drive hot hatchback costs.

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