2025 Toyota GR Corolla First Drive: New Automatic Option Only Makes It Better

The Toyota Corolla is essentially the default car who someone who just wants reliable transportation that gives a good value for the money. There's good reason why it's become one of the best selling cars in history. It's unpretentious, sensible and boring in the best possible way. In the same way that you don't want a washing machine to be exciting, the Toyota Corolla in its base model configuration, does a fantastic job of presenting itself in a way that won't scare anyone.

The Toyota GR Corolla, on the other hand, is diametrically opposed to the adopted mission statement of Toyota's perennial commuter car. It's loud, brash, fast, and moderately expensive. It's also an absolute blast to drive as I found out when Toyota let me dash one around a track a few days ago. Where the Corolla is calm and collected, the GR Corolla is wild and fierce. The Corolla is a sip of Earl Grey tea. The GR Corolla is drinking a can of Red Bull after you've been awake for 23 hours.

Before I can detail how the GR Corolla performs on its home turf, the track, I need to explain what it is and how the 2025 model year differentiates itself. At its heart, the 2025 Toyota GR Corolla is a four-door all-wheel drive hatchback that's powered by a turbocharged 1.6-liter three-cylinder engine that generates 300 horsepower and 295 pound-feet of torque (an upgrade from previous model years).

There are a few big changes for 2025. The first change is the addition of an eight-speed automatic transmission (don't worry, the six-speed manual is still around). Toyota also added a Premium Plus trim for some extra creature comforts. The suspension has been worked over to provide a more predictable and stable ride when driving "dynamically." The changes are rounded out with some exterior design changes. Current GR Corolla fans will see a few welcome changes to the lineup and new fans who aren't manual-transmission purists (myself among them) get to experience the hot hatch for the first time.

I drove the new GR Corolla from the hotel to the day's events and it was perfectly suitable as a daily driver, if a little stiff and sporty. For what its worth, an elderly gentleman driving a heavily modified Toyota truck from the 1980s gave me a very enthusiastic wave on the highway. Toyota decided that the best place to get a feel for the dynamism of the GR Corolla was the heart of racing in the United States. No, not Laguna Seca, Watkins Glen, or Circuit of the Americas. We drove at the one and only Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina. Yee Haw.

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As someone who grew up playing NASCAR games on the Nintendo 64, I was excited to a perhaps unreasonable degree to drive on a real NASCAR track. The track didn't disappoint and the GR Corolla was a perfect car for the occasion (perhaps aside from an actual NASCAR stock car).

I've been around a race track a few times, but I'm hardly what you would call "seasoned." In frank terms, the intro familiarization lap on the rad course that Toyota had set up was deeply weird. As with most people, I was not used to driving on the steeply banked turns that Charlotte has, and at the steady pace of the intro lap I felt like I was going to fall off the bank. However, the GR Corolla held its ground (literally and figuratively) and I can attest that even while it was cruising leisurely along almost parallel to the ground, it felt no different than a grocery store parking lot.

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At high speed around the track, the GR Corolla justified its existence. The course included two banked turns on one side of the speedway, and a road course in-between that gave a good mix of high speed and low speed opportunities for the GR Corolla to prove its mettle. Over the course of the day, Toyota wanted me and my colleagues to keep speeds around 85 miles per hour. I did my best to hold to that (and for professional reasons, that is all I will say about the matter).

While the banked turns felt alien at low speeds, they make a lot more sense at 80+ miles per hour. Then, the banks guide you into turning with only minimal use of the steering wheel, in turn allowing you to really open up the throttle. I realize that NASCAR stock cars and Indycars are typically blasting around tracks like Charlotte at speeds approaching 200 miles per hour, but I was able to at least get an idea of the phenomenon at speeds that weren't even half that. You have to give a hand to track engineers.

When turns that weren't going left approached, the GR Corolla was snappy and responsive. The all-wheel drive and revised suspension system did their collective jobs and I never once felt like I was going to lose the GR Corolla in a corner. It went where I pointed it in the most fun way possible. Despite its snarling exhaust note and playful exterior, the Corolla was only exactly as fun as I let it be: it never got out of hand or let itself feel like it had "too much" power. 300 horsepower is enough to have fun, but you likely aren't going to lose control and eat traffic cones unless you or the Corolla skipped breakfast and you really need a snack.

Overall, I did five total laps of Toyota's road course and it was a lot of fun. The 2025 Toyota GR Corolla with its 8-speed automatic transmission handled the track like it was born to do it. Only a minimal amount of cones paid the price over the course of the day and that proves two things: first, my colleagues and I were on our best behavior as guests of Toyota and the speedway, and more importantly, the GR Corolla is an incredible track day car right out of the box.

On the financial end, the 2025 Toyota GR Corolla starts with an MSRP of $38,860. The Premium Plus model I drove carried a price tag of $47,990. For comparison, the base model 2025 Corolla hatchback starts at $23,630. Of course, with the base model you don't get 300 horsepower and the ability to tackle a NASCAR track with aplomb, but it's worth noting that the extra power and upgrades comes at a substantial premium.

After all of the excitement, I drove to lunch in a 2025 Toyota Sienna, and while I didn't get a lot of time behind the wheel, I can attest that I achieved a very impressive 36 miles a gallon over the course of my drive and it was a perfect place to decompress after a fun morning. I am not someone who gets nervous on the track and I'm generally very calm behind the wheel, but it was certainly a very nice place to be after all the adrenaline rush that is driving on a NASCAR track.

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When lunch concluded, Toyota ferried all of us to the Toyota Gazoo Racing facility, also in North Carolina. It was there that I saw where Toyota not only modifies its cars like the Toyota GR86 and now GR Corolla to become turn-key race cars, but also where the drivers that work for Toyota's GR team can exercise, relax, train, and eat in a way that allows them to perform their best. The facility even has an onsite therapist to make sure drivers have everything they need.

The Toyota GR Corolla, now with the option of an automatic, suddenly becomes more than just a Honda Civic Type R competitor. It's now accessible to a much wider range of people who didn't grow up driving manual transmission cars, or who just don't feel the need to row through the gears themselves. It's another option within Toyota's already fairly wide stable of enthusiast-geared cars. 

While a Honda Civic Type R is fantastic in its own right, a manual-only transmission limits its audience quite a bit. The GR Corolla's eight-speed automatic in addition to a six-speed manual just ensures that everyone is invited to the track day party, not just people who have mastered the finer points of a three-pedal setup (even if they haven't, they'll insist they're bona-fide race car drivers just because their first-generation Miata has a stick-shift). Toyota gave a commuter car to the masses with the regular Corolla, now it has made the moves to give a hot racing hatch to everyone who wants one.

After two days with Toyota, the company showed that it was getting serious with its lineup and racing efforts, outside of providing a number of competent (if slightly unexciting) commuters. With the GR Corolla, Toyota gave drivers an accessible hot hatch that can simultaneously get a trunk full of groceries and evidently drive on a NASCAR track without any serious difficulty. The Toyota Sienna is the perfect vehicle for driving home from said track. And, on the off-chance you get the attention of Toyota's racing scouts, it has the facilities and staff to ensure that you can drive with the best.

Toyota certainly has something special with its Gazoo Racing program and it's coherent from the dealership where you buy a GR Corolla all the way to the upper echelons of professional motorsport. That not only warms the heart of an automotive enthusiast like me, but is also rare from a major automaker. That's certainly a bright look at the future of fun cars like the GR Corolla, and wider accessibility should only make Toyota's small sporty hatch a bigger success.