Toyota, known for building sedate commuter cars for years, has come out swinging in the past few years with exciting sports cars, including the new Supra and GR86. It also brought its vaunted rally-driven all-wheel drive (AWD) to America for the first time with the GR Corolla, a hot hatch with impressive specs and aggressive styling.

What’s New for the 2024 Toyota GR Corolla

The super-limited Morizo Edition trim is gone for 2024, and in its place is a new mid-range Premium trim that brings performance and upgraded interior features from the higher Circuit model.

Design

Toyota took the basic Corolla hatchback and gave it beefy fender flares, an aggressive front fascia, and a wild rear-end with triple exhaust finishers. The car gets 18-inch wheels across the board, and some configurations are available with a carbon roof. Toyota applied tasteful GR badging and avoided loud body graphics.

Powertrain

The GR Corolla’s powertrain is the star of the show. It’s a turbocharged 1.6-liter three-cylinder engine making 300 horsepower and 273 pound-feet of torque. It delivers power to all four wheels exclusively through a six-speed manual transmission. The GR’s AWD system offers granular control over power delivery, with the ability to shift between mostly driving all four wheels to splitting power mostly to the rear. Some configurations get Torsen limited-slip differentials front and rear, and the base Core trim gets an open differential. Though not the fastest car in a straight line, the GR Corolla’s ace in the hole is its incredibly responsive handling, and the AWD system helps it claw out of incredibly challenging corners with ease.

Interior

The GR Corolla’s interior builds on the base car with sports seats and slight revisions to accommodate the manual shifter. Cloth upholstery comes standard, while higher trims add synthetic leather, Alcantara, heated seats, and more. Though it's advertised as a five-seater, the Corolla hatchback’s rear seat is tight and should be reserved for kids in most situations.

Technology

Toyota equips a 12.3-inch digital gauge cluster with every 2024 GR Corolla, and an 8-inch touchscreen is also standard. Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, Bluetooth, SiriusXM radio, six speakers, USB inputs, and more come by default.

Safety

The GR Corolla comes standard with Toyota Safety Sense 3.0. The system brings automatic emergency braking, forward collision warnings, lane-departure alerts, lane-keep assist, adaptive cruise control, and road-sign recognition. The 2024 GR Corolla has not yet been crash-tested.

Pricing

As of this writing, the 2024 Toyota GR Corolla starts at $36,100. The midrange Premium starts at $39,920, and the top Circuit trim starts at $44,740. Toyota offers a few upgrades, but the bigger challenge for buyers are dealer markups, which are common for such a rare, desirable car.