Two Decades of Toyota Rallying Supremacy

In 1979 TTE relocated to Cologne, with all-new workshops on Toyota Allee. In 1991 Toyota committed to increasing its TTE shareholding and expanding the team’s facilities and by 1993 TTE was fully owned by Toyota Motor Corporation. Its name was changed to Toyota Motorsport GmBH (TMG), with Ove Andersson as company president. By this point, the number of staff had increased from an original 20 to more than 300, drawn from 17 different countries.

Statistics can only hint at the scale of the effort involved in taking Toyota to the pinnacle of the sport. By 2000, it had recorded 43 World Rally Championship victories, which translated into three manufacturers’ titles and four WRC drivers’ titles, two European titles, one Asian-Pacific title and four Middle East titles. Away from the principle international events, Toyota cars also powered to many national championship victories around the world, through distributors, dealers and private team entries.

Toyota’s first victory in the World Rally Championship was delivered by Bjorn Waldegard on the 1983 New Zealand Rally, heading a Toyota one-two on the event at the wheel of a Group 4 Celica GT. The Swedish driver went on to win the Safari Rally the following year, among a haul of seven victories that year for the Celica Twin-Cam Turbo.