Toyota Motorsport Museum

Many car manufacturers nowadays have their own classic department, which puts the individual brand tradition into the limelight at events and in own museum buildings with more or less effort. But a few companies are noticeably less involved in this important topic – partly because of space issues and partly because of budget problems. In addition to Opel and Ford, although they both have classic car collections but not an own museum, we also have to mention Toyota. Toyota? But they don’t produce cars in Germany at all, or do they? Almost right. And they do have the Toyota Collection as a ‘museum’? Yes, correct. But although no production cars roll off the line in Cologne, there is a small ‘production’ facility. It started, when a certain Ove Andersson settled his rally team next to the German headquarters of Toyota in 1979.

From here, the Japanese brand coordinated all rally activities national and international until 1999. During this time, the Cologne-based works team won four times the drivers title and three times the manufacturers title. At the wheel of those rally cars were big names such as Hannu Mikkola, Juha Kankkunen, Kenneth Eriksson, Carlos Sainz, Didier Auriol and Marcus Grönholm. Andersson founded his own rally team 1973 in Uppsala/Sweden, in order to inspect the rally cars from Toyota, that were prepared at the factory in Japan and then sent to the European rallies by ship. At that time, it wasn’t uncommon to have damages at the cars after shipping. He first came into contact with the brand a year earlier after his win at the Monte Carlo Rallye, when representatives of Toyota asked him to drive a Celica at the RAC Rally in Great Britain. After a short time, he moved his company to Brussels/Belgium and renamed it from ‘Andersson Motorsport’ to ‘Toyota Team Europe’ (TTE). Then, in 1979, the move to the Toyota Allee in Cologne followed, where the team is still at home today. In 1993, Toyota finally bought up the hitherto free company TTE and renamed it into Toyota Motorsport GmbH (TMG), whereby the rally team continued to operate under the acronym TTE.

After a twelve-month ban on the factory team from 1996 to 1997, triggered by a non-compliant turbocharger in the WRC version of the Celica in 1995, TTE returned to international rallies with the new Corolla WRC in mid-1997 for testing and then with full works team in 1998. They missed the driver’s title 1998 with Carlos Sainz/Luis Moya by a 500 meters, when their engine failed at the RAC Rally in Great Britain, but won the manufacturers title in 1999. Subsequently, they withdraw from the WRC as a works team, left the Corolla to privateers for some more years and focused instead on Formula 1. In addition, the Toyota Motorsport GmbH took over the activities in Sportscar Endurance Racing from the end of 1997, especially for the annually season highlight, the 24 Hours of Le Mans. With the specially developed TS020 GT-One they participated there in 1998 and 1999 and both times failed to win by only small setbacks. With the Formula 1 entry in 2002, prepared with a test car in 2001, the mission in sportscar racing ended for the time being.

In a total of eight F1 seasons TMG started as Panasonic Toyota Racing Team with drivers like Mika Salo, Allan McNish, Cristiano da Matta, Olivier Panis, Jarno Trulli, Ricardo Zonta, Ralf Schumacher, Timo Glock and Kamui Kobayashi. While no race victory could be achieved, there are at least five second and eight third places as well as three pole positions and three fastest laps for Toyota in the result lists. Shortly after the 2009 season finale in Abu Dhabi, Toyota announced their retirement from F1 in order to focus on their core business as an automaker. They followed the second Japanese works team Honda, who retired a year earlier, and BMW, who sold their works team back to Peter Sauber. After TMG had supplied the Swiss private race team Rebellion Racing with engines for their LMP2 project in 2011, they announced their return to sportscar racing as a works team in the LMP1 category of the FIA WEC (World Endurance Championship) for 2012. Since then, the team is represented there with at least two cars and finally achieved the long-awaited overall victory in Le Mans in 2018.

That’s the short history of Toyota Motorsport, which may have already been known to some of our readers. However, less known is the fact, that below the two wind tunnels of the racing department is a strictly guarded place containing valuable exhibits. It is a nearly never publicly accessible museum with vehicles from the extensive history of TTE and TMG. All starts with a lovingly decorated rally corner that shows not only cars but also pictures of rally events, for example at the Safari Rally in Kenya. From the very first Celica to the Group B Celica and the never-raced Group S MR2 version 222D to the winning cars of Juha Kankkunen and Carlos Sainz, the Corolla WRC and two prototypes of the Yaris WRC of today – although these are raced by Gazoo from Finland – some interesting cars are shown. TMG also develops rally cars for privateers, for example the GT86 CS-R3.

Directly under the tubes of the wind tunnels are the Formula 1 racing cars from the very first test and developing vehicle from the year 2001 up to the TF110, which was ready for racing in the 2010 season, but never was allowed to compete. The entire team of TMG signed one of the two chassis used for the final race at Abu Dhabi in 2009 – leaving behind some wistful spell. By the way, there is only one private owner of Toyota F1 cars outside of this factory museum and the car collection in Japan, but he actually almost owns one chassis per year of competing and also uses them for trackdays.

In the area of the endurance race cars, one car is noticed first, that doesn’t belong into the line. Well, it also wears the Toyota badge like most other cars in the room, but the development of the TS010 didn’t take place in Cologne, but in cooperation with TOM’s Racing (Tachi Oiwa Motorsport) in Japan. It was one of the final runners for the Group C reglement and debuted in 1991 in the World Sportscar Championship (WSC), where it also raced in 1992. Next to that it was used in All Japan Sports Prototype Championship (JSPC). It managed to achieve a second place in Le Mans and the title in the JSPC, before in 1993 both, WSC and JSPC, were discontinued and the car was only allowed to race in Le Mans. There it came home in fourth place. Subsequently, TOM’s team relocated their efforts to IMSA.

It was only with the TS020 GT-One that the TMG team in Cologne started exploring the then-regulations for GT1 cars. They produced seven cars from this type, of which one had to be road legal. Two copies are in the Motorsport Museum today, another one within the facilities of TMG and one at the other side of the street at the Toyota Collection. Even modern racers, starting with the TS030 from 2012, are shown in the Motorsport Museum. Only the latest offshoot TS050, with which Toyota finally achieved the overall victory at Le Mans, is missing in the collection. But next to those prototypes they also give an indication about their work with production cars. TMG developes tuning components for Toyota and Lexus vehicles, of which some led to special edition models like the Corolla TS and others remained stillborn concept cars like a Lexus IS 200 with engine conversion to a supercharged V8 or the TMG TS-650, a Lexus LS 460 L with a 650-hp strong engine.

So far only a few initiates know of this sacred ground for motorsport fans. Public tours are rarely offered for small groups. If some of the employees on site could decide it, they would like to show these cars more often and provide insights into the history, but the current premises are due to the very limited ceiling height with headache potential for sure. Added to this is the location at the far end of the factory area – so visitors can potentially get unwanted insights on their way from the gate to the museum. So we have to hope for Toyota Motorsport GmbH to find another hall and/or another way to show these fantastic and unique cars to the public more often. They are definitely too good for dusting.

Images: Matthias Kierse