2023 Toyota GR Corolla Review: Keeping the Cheap Speed Torch Alight

Toyota’s hot hatch delivers the goods you want from an affordable plaything. If only it had more room in back.

Published June 26, 2023

These are not the best of times for fans of cheap speed. Here in 2023, cars are more expensive than ever; the pandemic-related supply crunch may have largely passed, but average transaction price for a new vehicle hovers around $48,000. Used car pricing has also softened from its COVID-era insanity, but most desirable models are still trading for more than they were before 2020.

Making matters worse, car companies these days are chasing higher margins as they brace themselves for expensive forced market shifts to electric propulsion, which by and large means they’re concentrating on SUVs and trucks rather than the small sedans, coupes and hatchbacks that make the basis for cheap speed machines.

A few brands, though, are attempting to keep the torch alight as best they can. Honda may not offer the Q-shop Accord 2.0T anymore, but you can still snag a variety of sporty Civics for a reasonable price. Subaru may have tossed the STI name aside for the time being, but you can still snag a WRX for under $30,000. Mazda’s Mazda3 2.5 Turbo model packs near-luxury accoutrements with hot hatch pep for those whose lives have outgrown the MX-5 Miata. And, starting for the 2023 model year, you can grab a Toyota hatchback with all-wheel-drive, a manual gearbox and a demon of a tiny turbocharged engine: the GR Corolla.

2023 Toyota GR Corolla: What We Think

The GR Corolla delivers exactly what it promises: tons of thrills and enough practicality to make it a reasonable primary car for many driving enthusiasts. It’s a little on the small size even for a compact car, which limits its usability — it’s best treated as a 2+2 rather than a true four-seater. Still, its tenacious grip, playful handling, delectable turbocharged engine and manual gearbox combination make it an ideal plaything for the price … assuming, of course, you manage to find one at or close to the MSRP, which can be an issue in and of itself.

The Toyota GR Corolla brings the fun you would hope

The heart of the GR Corolla is small but mighty: a 1.6-liter turbocharged inline-three that’s also found in the even smaller, not-made-for-U.S.-shores GR Yaris hatchback. For the slightly larger Corolla, however, the three-pot gains a little power; it makes 300 horses here, up from 268 in the Yaris. (Credit a revised exhaust system for some of the increase, as well as a few other tweaks here and there.) Torque remains unchanged from the GR Yaris, at 273 lb-ft … but considering this Corolla weighs in at under 3,300 pounds, that’s hardly cause for concern.

That’s enough to rip this little car from 0-60 mph in a shade under 4.9 seconds, assuming you’re willing to rev the bejeezus out of it on the launch. The 5-60 mph time of 6.4 seconds is more indicative of what most people who value their clutch life will experience.

But hot hatches aren’t about sprinting off the line as much as they are about what it’s like once you’re rolling: spinning up the revs to juice the turbo boost, clinging to turns like a cat hanging onto a couch when you’re trying to yank it loose, feeling the car dance on the limit as the sounds and forces bounce through your body and spark fire in your adrenal glands. It’s here where the GR Corolla excels.

With its compact form and all four wheels pushed out to the edges, the GR Corolla reacts almost telepathically, enabling you to place the car precisely as you slice and dice through corners. Keep that engine revved up in the heart of the powerband — a task that’s always more involving when shifting for yourself — and the GR Corolla feels unstoppable, snapping forward as quickly as you can twitch your right foot and shedding speed the instant that foot moves to the left. Some cars separate you from the driving experience to help you relax; this one immerses you in it so deeply, you feel like you’re mainlining the asphalt.

At least, on back roads. It’s slightly less at home on the highway, what with its close-ratio gearbox that keeps the little engine buzzing hot at 75-plus miles per hour. (It’s probably worth spending the $770 for the Technology Package in order to get the eight-speaker JBL stereo, just to drown out the noise at freeway speeds.) Still, that guarantees the power is there when you need to zip past all those larger vehicles that clot up the roadway … unless, of course, you’re feeling fast and furious and want to drop down a cog or two to really blow them away.

Like many a cheap speed machine, the interior doesn’t feel quite worth the price

For a car to deliver affordable performance, its maker usually needs to find ways to … well, not cut corners, per se, but rather strategically choose where to spend precious development dollars in order to maximize return for the target customer. And for cheap speed machines, that usually tends to be the interior.

From a usability standpoint, there’s little to complain about in the interior, at least from the driver’s seat. The steering wheel and shifter are well-positioned, and hard buttons and tactile controls are blessedly prevalent; there’s even a good-old-fashioned manual handbrake for ripping epic drifts, should you be so inclined. (And you should be.) The instrument panel serves up ample opportunity for customization and plenty of valuable information, offering everything from real-time power split to boost pressure to G-forces on either side of the central tach-and-speedo combo.

Still, this is the interior of a Toyota Corolla at the end of the day. Apart from one or two performance-minded touches, like the microsuede and faux leather on the seats, the materials found pretty much everywhere are made for a $22,000 car. That shouldn’t be enough to put off the target buyers — after all, they’re buying for speed, not for luxury — but it’s still something worth noting for anyone considering a purchase.

It may be a hatchback, but the GR Corolla isn’t that usable

Hatchback are often lauded for their cargo carrying capacity; in fact, when you think about it, the hatchback is basically what makes station wagons and SUVs so convenient.

Yet the Toyota GR Corolla’s rear doesn’t quite live up to the capacious promises of the fifth door. As you can see, my pair of Yeti soft coolers proved too big to fit in back without some extreme contortion that would risk damaging the chilled goods inside; I would up sticking them in the back seat. Toyota claims 17.8 cubic feet of space back there, but the rakish, fastback-like angle of the rear glass make it much less usable than, say, the cargo bay of a VW Golf. (That’s not a GR-specific complaint, by the way; the regular Toyota Corolla hatchback shares the same issue.)

Speaking of the back seat: it’s much better suited to carrying Yetis than humans. One look at the numbers versus its arch-rival Honda Civic Type R say it all: the GR Corolla offers 29.9 inches of rear legroom, the CTR 37.4 inches; the Toyota serves up 45.5 inches of hip room, the Honda 48.9. Unless your rear passengers are CPR dummies, they’ll be hard-pressed to find much comfort in the back of the Corolla.

There’s a sportier GR Corolla Morizo Edition, but it’s not worth the money

I drove the top-of-the-line GR Corolla, the Morizo edition. “Morizo” was the racing pseudonym used by former Toyota president Akio Toyoda. It’s basically the GR Corolla, modified for track duty. It’s lighter than other GR Corollas, shaving weight by deleting the rear seat and adding a carbon fiber roof. It has special track-minded suspension and gearbox tuning, as well as 22 more lb-ft of torque. And it jacks the price up $14,000 to $49,900 — over $50,000 once you add in the destination and handling charge.

I’m kind of offended by the Morizo edition on principle. The point of a hot hatch should be to provide an afford, practical driver’s car for scrubs like me who can only afford to drive one car — not a fancy, limited-run, specialized alternative for people fleshing out their extensive sports car collection. And as a father of two, it basically became utterly useless to me for most of my driving. But beyond those two sticking points, the GR Corolla makes a more or less tolerable everyday driver.

Having only driven the Morizo on public roads, I can’t vouch for the differences the tweaks make on the limit. But on paper, if you’re planning to track the GR Corolla and have a lot of money to throw at it, getting your ready-made racer from the factory and not affecting your warranty feels like the way to go. Even if the visual distinctions are minimal, the interior feels very Corolla on a now-$50,000-car and explaining the Morizo edition to people becomes tedious. I’d personally go for the Core model … and a back seat. —Tyler Duffy

2023 Toyota GR Corolla: Alternatives

The ranks of true hot hatches we can still score here in America numbers just three; set aside the Toyota, and you’re left with the Volkswagen Golf R and the Civic Type R. The latter is much like the GR Corolla in terms of extroverted design and delivers a superior ride and more user-friendly interior, but its engine only drives the front wheels, which could be a dealbreaker for some cold-weather customers. The former packs all-wheel-drive, a more understated appearance, a more user-friendly cargo bay and the option of an automatic gearbox, but its infotainment and controls are almost nightmarish.

Sadly, though, the GR Corolla’s biggest obstacle to mainstream success may lie closer to home: not in the form of another model in the family, but rather, in the decisions made by Toyota and its independent dealer franchisees. The parent company made the decision to limit production in order to boost demand — arguably not a bad idea when dealing with a dying category like hot hatches — which in turn has prompted many dealerships to stick sky-high markups on the few that cross their door. Stories of prices inflated by five digits aren’t uncommon online, placing this ostensibly affordable performance machine out of reach of those it was ostensibly intended to appeal to — and, perhaps inadvertently, driving yet another nail into the coffin of cheap speed in America.