Made in Britain, destroyed in Germany

Toyota never really went away from Le Mans after its 3.5-litre TS010 Group C car was legislated out of the race in 1993. It kept its toe in the water with a series of low-key projects through the mid1990s, but by the end of the decade was looking to make a proper return.

TOM’S GB was given a small amount of seed money – reportedly just £500,000 – to produce a generic LMP prototype that ran for the first time in July 1996. Designed by Andy Thorby, the open-top car, known as the TOM’S Toyota LMP, was powered by a 2.1-litre four-cylinder turbo Group C engine of 1980s vintage.

“That was the only engine we could get,” recalls Hiroshi Fushida, who ran the British TOM’S operation. “But we thought a lightweight car with a fuel-efficient engine could result in a package that could be competitive overall.”

The car tested twice before Toyota decided its full-house Le Mans return would be run from Toyota Motorsport Gmbh in Cologne. Andre de Cortanze, designer of Peugeot’s 905 Group C car, was recruited to head up the project, and the TOM’S Toyota was sent to Germany.

Exactly what he made of the car nicknamed ‘Lumpy’ isn’t known. But he almost certainly didn’t spend too much time on it as he began work on what became known as the Toyota GT-ONE.

John Litjens, now technical director on Toyota’s LMP1 project, was a young engineer with TMG when the project started in January 1997, and suggests that de Cortanze’s belief in original thinking meant he wouldn’t have been interested in someone else’s design.

“Andre was an innovator,” says Litjens. “He didn’t even like his engineers looking at Giorgio Piola drawings in the pages of Autosport and Autosprint. He wanted his engineers to be creative and not copy other people’s ideas.”

Litjens and others confirm the car was quickly forgotten and ultimately crushed.