Toyota PRIUS GT300 race car
The 2012 season of Super GT racing series is shaping up to be a very exciting one. Subaru officially announced their participation in the series with their BRZ GT300 race car earlier this month. Below is my rendering I did of it before it was unveiled at the Tokyo Motor show yesterday.

Toyota is said to be getting in it with their very own GT300 race car. No it’s not a Toyota 86 but can you believe a PRIUS?!
Japanese weekly publication, オートスポーツ Auto Sport Magazine, reports that a Toyota Prius is being prepped to race in the 2012 season of the Super GT series. The new Prius model will be modified to race in the GT300 class and will begin shakedown testing early next year.
Below is the rendering of the Toyota PRIUS GT300 race car as posted in page 4 of the オートスポーツ – Auto Sport Magazine (no relation with the British magazine of the same name).

Team APR is responsible in bringing up the hybrid PRIUS to GT300 spec. They are the same team that entered a pair of Corolla Axio GT this year.
They placed 6th in the 2011 Super GT Point Ranking with their #74 Corolla AXIO and 14th place with their #31 car.



On the same オートスポーツ – Auto Sport Magazine issue, Team JIMGAINER was reported to be swapping their Ferrari GTC race car with a GT300-spec Honda CR-Z. A few images of a GT300 looking CR-Z surfaced back in August 2010 via GTChannel. Could this be it?!





My best guess is that Team JIMGAINER will retire their F430 GT and replace it with the new CR-Z GT300 and race it along side their 458 GTC race car which placed 2nd in the GT300 Class Team Point Ranking.

We can only speculate as there hasn’t been any official press release from either teams. But a 300HP PRIUS and a CR-Z in full GT300 outfit?! That is exciting!
source: オートスポーツ Auto Sport Magazine, GTChannel, SuperGT










Blasmephy…
This is nuts!?
A Prius with 300Bhp on tap?
Has JGTC gone ‘green’… surely can’t be running hybrid power.
Electormotor will overheat.
CR-Z GT300 that must be the smallest GT300 ever.
[Reply]
A Prius with 300HP? I had to laugh with that one!
Out of all the cars Toyota has created, the Prius seemed to
me the least proper car that would of been used for racing. Looking forward how it will perform though.
[Reply]
DJ Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 7:29 pm
I personally work for toyota USA. Yes the prius will be used as the gt300. main reasoning is because of the drag coefficient. The prius has the LOWEST drag co of any volume production car. The 2012 model currently is at .25….. yes that low. However i have no idea if they are running hybrid racing tech for this. In their Le Mans cars they are running hybrid tech…so it wouldn’t be a far fetched idea.
[Reply]
You guys are laughing at the Prius GT300? This ain’t NASCAR. Clearly, you’re not up to snuff with Toyota’s racing hybrid efforts.
http://www.webwombat.com.au/motoring/news_reports/toyota-hybrid-tokashi-24-race-win.htm
http://blogs.wsj.com/drivers-seat/2011/10/15/toyota-to-race-hybrid-car-at-le-mans-next-year/
Jon, is that your render of the Prius, in this month;=’s オートスポーツ Auto Sport Magazine
~BG
[Reply]
jonsibal Reply:
December 16th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
The artwork I believe was done by Hiroya Kato.
[Reply]
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