Seemingly every car manufacturer is coming out with its own little niche performance group. You have Honda->ke34 with its Si line, Infiniti->ke36 with its IPL line, Mercedes with AMG, BMW->ke178 with M, Ford with SVT/SHO, and so on. Toyota has used a tag like that before – Toyota Racing Department (TRD) – but the TRD lineup was typically nothing to write home about, as it included some stickers and mild suspension mods, in most cases.

Toyota->ke88 once again has a racing team, Toyota Motorsport GmbH (TMG), and it has worked closely with Lexus on the 641-horsepower LS-F, which inherited the “TMG” tag. So this leads us to wonder if Toyota and Lexus will start using the TMG name more widely to compete with the aforementioned performance sub-brands throughout the automotive world.

With Infiniti debuting its IPL lineup, it only makes sense for at least Lexus to use TMG to help pry some of the performance luxury enthusiasts away from its Japanese competitor. Toyota, on the other hand, has really dug itself a nice little niche in the automotive market, by manufacturing moderately price economy cars with a high level of standards. So us seeing a Toyota Corolla->ke1039 TMG in the near future, or ever, would really surprise us.

But we also have to keep in mind that Toyota shattered its own econo-box mold recently by teaming up with Subaru to build the Toyota GT 86 and Scion FR-S, so anything is really a possibility. We’ll keep a close eye on the TMG situation and let you know if more information comes up as to whether TMG is going to become more involved in Toyota’s street cars or not.

For now, we’ll just continue drooling over the one-off LF-A TMG…

.