It’s Official: The Toyota GR Corolla Will Be Built In Britain

Sometimes, car industry rumours amount to nothing, but occasionally, they’ll quickly prove to be a lot more than mere hearsay. That’s what’s happened this week, as following reports a few days ago that a UK production line for the Toyota GR Corolla could open, it’s now been confirmed by the manufacturer.

Toyota has confirmed that its rally-bred hatch and big sibling to the sensational GR Yaris will be produced on a new production line at its Burnaston, Derbyshire factory starting next year, with preparations having begun at some point in 2024.

Presently, the GR Corolla is produced solely at Toyota’s Motomachi plant in Toyota City near Nagoya, Japan, but the company, per the original Reuters report, is said to be struggling to meet demand from the US, with long wait times resulting.

Toyota’s various US plants, meanwhile, are busy building other vehicles for which there’s high demand in the country, making it difficult to add GR Corolla production there. Adding a GR-specific production line to the Burnaston plant, meanwhile, should require a comparatively small effort, as the factory already produces the regular Corolla.

While it’s not said to be a factor behind the decision, building the US-market GR Corolla in the UK would likely bring another benefit for Toyota. Cars brought in from Japan are currently subject to Donald Trump’s 25 per cent tariff on all non-US-built cars, but the UK government recently negotiated a trade deal to have this reduced to 10 per cent on up to 100,000 cars per year.

Sadly, what none of this necessarily means is that the GR Corolla is going on sale in Europe. Despite several prototypes being spotted testing at the Nürburgring last year, Toyota still has no plans – publicly at least – to market the car here.

That said, Toyota’s press release says that “details of the markets for sales, production volumes and investment levels will be confirmed at a later date,” so all hope isn’t lost for a long-awaited European debut for the car. We reached out to Toyota GB for any insight in this, and were told that the company can't offer insight into future markets at this time.

If the GR Corolla does remain forbidden fruit in the UK despite being built here, it wouldn’t be the first Japanese hot hatch to be in such a situation – famously, the Japanese market version of the EP3 Honda Civic Type R, which featured numerous chassis upgrades and an extra 20bhp over the European version, was still built in Honda’s now-closed factory in Swindon.