Toyota GR Corolla: US-Modell nun nicht mehr in Japan gefertigt

Buyers likely won't notice the change, aside from a different VIN prefix. Toyota's decision to shift some GR Corolla production out of Japan just got a lot less theoretical. Exactly a year after the company confirmed the hot hatch would also be built in the UK, the handover for American-market cars is already underway, and some buyers may have unknowingly driven home in a British-built example.

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According to a new report from Road&Track, the first UK-assembled GR Corollas are already trickling into US dealerships. That's a faster timeline than Toyota initially suggested when it announced plans to expand production beyond Japan for the first time. Until now, every GR Corolla had been assembled at Toyota's Motomachi plant in Japan.

That's the same factory that has

That's the same factory that has produced several of the company's enthusiast-focused models. But soaring demand and limited production capacity forced Toyota to look elsewhere. The solution ended up being the company's Burnaston factory in Derbyshire, England, which already builds the standard Corolla for Europe. As we highlighted in our original coverage, this is an ironic move since the folks building the car can't buy it where they live.

Toyota says the move is about improving supply and shortening delivery times for North American buyers. The Burnaston facility reportedly has the capacity to build around 10,000 GR Corollas annually. That capacity could ease the long wait lists that have frustrated enthusiasts since the car launched in 2022. Notably, Toyota is building the car on its own dedicated line rather than alongside everyday Corollas.

Stephen Rivers for Carscoops That's important because the two are mostly the same just in name. For example, Toyota says a regular Corolla's assembly alignment tolerance sits around 0.75 degrees. The GR Corolla targets 0.25 degrees, while most cars allegedly leave the line with accuracy as tight as 0.05 degrees. Workers reportedly use special jigs to set suspension geometry before installation, and even the wheel nuts are torque-checked manually before the car leaves the line.

The GR line itself also sounds wildly different from Toyota's normal high-volume approach. While a regular Corolla moves through assembly stations in just 142 seconds, each GR Corolla reportedly spends roughly 21 minutes at each of its 20 stations. According to the automaker, there shouldn't be any sort of noticeable change between UK-built cars and the ones that came from Japan. The only way to tell the difference is that the VIN starts with an S rather than with a J.