Toyota GR Yaris RZ-H With Direct Automated Transmission Rumored To Debut In Tokyo

Can an computerized transmission ever be as partaking as a handbook? Toyota thinks so, and it’ll use the GR Yaris to show it

The Toyota GR Yaris has been welcomed by lovers, however Toyota could quickly take steps to assist it enchantment to much more drivers. Early subsequent yr, on the Tokyo Auto Salon, the model will reportedly unveil a model of the recent hatch geared up with an computerized transmission.

The GR Yaris is presently provided completely with a six-speed handbook transmission. Nevertheless, Toyota has been engaged on a brand new eight-speed transmission that it calls the GR-DAT, or “Direct Auto Transmission,” which it believes will supply drivers an attractive sufficient expertise.

Already in use in a prototype GR Yaris racecar, no much less a supply than Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda known as it a “game-changer.” Japan’s Magazine X stories that it’ll quickly be put in in a manufacturing mannequin known as the GR Yaris RZ-H, which will probably be revealed on the Tokyo Auto Salon, which runs from January 12-14.

Learn: Toyoda Calls GR Yaris’ Experimental Automated ‘A Recreation Changer’

Billed as a gearbox that bridges the hole between the partaking however hard-to-learn handbook, and the easy-to-use however imprecise computerized, Toyoda stated the transmission helped shave sufficient day off his laps that he was in a position to sustain with skilled drivers like Hiroaki Ishiura, who was additionally given the chance to check the expertise.

“On a racetrack, a daily AT feels slippery (because of the mechanics), supplying you with little sense of a direct connection (with the gears),” Ishiura instructed the Toyota Occasions journal again in October. “That’s the place the D in DAT is available in: Direct. It locks in from the second you set off, responding linearly to gasoline pedal enter and permitting you to shave day off your laps with none loss.”

Along with the automated model of the GR Yaris, Toyota is additionally reportedly engaged on two restricted version fashions to have a good time its latest success within the World Rally Championship: the Ogier Version and the Rovenpara Version, named after the rally drivers who helped develop the race automotive. They are going to be unveiled forward of the 2024 Monte Carlo rally, which is able to run from January 24 to twenty-eight, and will probably be restricted to 100 examples-a-piece.