Toyota's bang-for-bucks champ: New Toyota GR Corolla to continue brand's boring to bonkers revolution... with Supra power? - reports

The reveal of the next Toyota Corolla approaches, with the world’s most popular car expected to enter a new generation next year.

Speculative renders of what we could expect from the 2026 Toyota Corolla are already rife, but one from CarScoops (above) alludes to the potential for the next-gen Corolla to come with a rather spicy companion.

Connecting the dots of the incoming new Corolla and the way Toyota has been developing new engines and spruiking its GR performance brand's combustion future, the next GR Corolla could be even more powerful than it is now.

While the Corolla currently shares a powertrain with the smaller (but more focused) GR Yaris, that being a turbocharged 1.6-litre three-cylinder petrol engine making 221kW and 400Nm, rumours suggest a more potent mill is coming.

Think back to Auto Salon at the start of 2025, where Toyota showed off a concept called the GR Yaris M which featured a mid-mounted engine.

That engine is a 2.0-litre turbo four-cylinder petrol engine being developed by Toyota, which has said recently that the aim is to develop such an engine to produce as much as 300kW.

Not only would that see the engine competing with the 310kW four-pot engine built by AMG known as the M139 - the world's most powerful production four-cylinder engine upon debut - but it also makes the possibility for Toyota’s next-gen GR cars extremely interesting.

Toyota Corolla render (image: Thanos Pappas)

The chances of the engine powering a next-gen Supra, as well as the possibility of a Celica, MR2 and a new GR86, make the engine pretty important for Toyota's GR division.

But the next Toyota GR Corolla could also end up with the 2.0-litre engine teased in the GR Yaris M concept.

It would follow the likelihood that the 1.5-litre version could feature in the standard version of the Corolla, where Toyota's ability to work with electrification should come in handy.

While the GR-bound 2.0-litre engine will aim for big power, the new Corolla mill will aim for big efficiency - a fuel consumption figure under 4.0L/100km and a modest power boost of around 7kW over the current 103kW hybrid, up to 110kW.

Of course, the chances we’ll know everything about the next GR Corolla upon the reveal of the next-gen car’s initial launch are slim, so stay tuned.