THE NOMINEES

6 Toyota Tacoma 1998 Pikes Peak car

Pikes Peak expert Rod Millen had already won the event three times in versions of a Celica before the idea was created to build the truck-shaped Tacoma, which was fitted with a 2.1-litre IMSA-derived engine to take the 4700ft climb over the 12.4-mile course. Even Millen couldn’t beat his 1998 effort of 10m07s when he returned a year later, although he did add a fifth crown and his fourth-straight event victory.

3 Toyota Celica GT-Four

From the moment it was first introduced into the World Rally Championship in 1988, the Toyota Celica GT-Four looked like a gamechanger. The story of the car ended in ignominy though, as Toyota Team Europe was found to have used an underbonnet tweak to illegally ramp up the car’s turbocharger power, and Toyota was banned from motorsport for a year.

7 Toyota TF105

Mike Gascoyne helped pen the TF105, which was a time when all the grand prix learning was supposed to have been done and the results were expected. Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli were plugged into the cockpit and Trulli’s run of three podiums (two seconds and a third) over the opening five races looked promising and, at that stage, he was second only in the drivers’ championship to eventual winner Fernando Alonso.

9 Toyota Yaris WRC

With its pulling power and budget, Toyota was able to gradually collect together the driving strength it wanted and, by 2019, it became the WRC’s powerhouse it is today. Ott Tanak took the title in the Yaris with six wins, but Hyundai aced the makes’ crown.

When Ogier joined a year later, the Japanese attack became impregnable and it hasn’t lost a drivers’ crown since.

1 Toyota Celica 2000GT

Toyota’s first tentative steps in the World Rally Championship came with the 2000GT, and it was a winner in the top flight. The machine carried the Japanese firm’s colour with pride and was a winner in the hands of Bjorn Waldegard in 1982 before the Group B era took over and the team switched to a twin-cam version, but the 2000GT had been the foundation for Toyota’s huge success in the WRC.

2 Toyota Corolla AE86

Chris Hodgetts had been a mainstay of the British Saloon Car Championship – and the Toyota line-up – in the early 1980s, but it wasn’t until he returned Japanese firm’s fold in 1986 that things really took off. The Team Toyota GB-backed coupe-style machine took a remarkable run of 18 triumphs from 20 starts over a two-season campaign.

4 Toyota TS010

As the long-distance landscape was changing, so did Toyota’s offering. It needed to embrace the new 3.5-litre normally aspirated World Sportscar Championship rules and did so with the gorgeous Tony Southgate-penned TS010. It was an outlandish car for the outlandish regulations of the period.

5 Toyota GT-One

If you were truly bonkers enough, you could have bought a Toyota GT-One to drive on the roads. That was the homologation requirement of the GT1 class, which the Japanese firm entered in 1998. The Dallarabuilt and Toyota Team Europe-run GT-Ones looked much less like the road-going versions entered by Mercedes and Porsche at the time and therefore became more of a crowd favourite.

8 Toyota TS-050

When Toyota joined the World Endurance Championship in 2012, it was clear that the global crown was one of its aims. There was another undeclared mission though that all with an eye to history knew about: it was desperate to finally prevail at Le Mans.

It finally did in 2018 with Fernando Alonso, Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima claiming the win – the first of two for the crew and three for the TS050. Finally, the monkey was off Toyota’s back – and it scooped two FIA World Endurance titles to boot. It was Toyota’s dreamachieving sportscar.

10 Toyota Corolla

Switching to a new car all designed in-house is mammoth for any team, but in 2019 British Touring Car Championship team Speedworks Motorsport did not flinch from the challenge with the Corolla and got four wins in its maiden season. Driver Tom Ingram was in with a shot of the crown going into 2020’s finale round and just lost out despite another three victories along the way. Christian and Amy Dick’s team has expanded to running two machines.