New Toyota Four-Pot Engine Could Make Supercar Power

Toyota piqued our interest earlier this year when it announced that – together with Subaru and Mazda – it was working on an all-new range of compact petrol engines, with the explicit purpose of keeping internal combustion around in its cars for many years to come.

We were even more intrigued when we got to hear the new engine – a turbocharged four-cylinder in both 1.5 and 2.0-litre capacities – in action in a Lexus prototype, producing a distinctly sporty four-pot rasp.

Now, if it didn’t already, Toyota very much has our full attention, because according to rumours from Japanese magazine Best Car, the engine could make almost 600bhp.

This does come with a rather large asterisk – that power figure is attached to a rumoured race-only version of the engine, which is targeting a nice, round 600ps – 592bhp, in old money. A torque figure of 295lb ft is also suggested for this version.

If these reports are true, though, then the roadgoing version won’t exactly be down on power. In its most powerful form, it’s set to be targeting 400ps, or 395bhp. That puts it right up there with the hottest four-cylinder road car engine around today, Mercedes-AMG’s 2.0-litre turbo which, in its most powerful non-hybrid form, churns out 416bhp.

Below that, there’s said to be a 300ps/296bhp version of the 2.0-litre in the works, as well as presumably some much less powerful 1.5-litre versions for less performance-biased applications.

But what can we expect to find these powerplants in? The broader engine family is set to be dropped into all manner of Toyotas and Lexuses in the coming years, but the more powerful variants are specifically tied to revivals of two of Toyota’s much-loved sporting names: the MR2 and Celica.

Rumours of a new MR2 have been around for a while, spurred on a couple of years ago by the reveal of (an admittedly electric) mid-engined sports car concept, the FT-Se. The last we heard, it was set to get a full EV version as well as a combustion derivative powered by a version of the GR Yaris’s three-pot, but it now seems more likely a version of the 2.0-litre four will sit amidships in it.

Whispers of a new Celica, meanwhile, re-emerged earlier this year – if true, it’s set to be a four-wheel drive coupe using the 400bhp version of the engine, and we could supposedly see a concept version as early as February 2025.

This is all very much to be taken with a big pinch of salt for now, but we know how dedicated Toyota is currently to performance cars, and we’re really keeping our fingers crossed that it all comes true.