The Toyota GR Yaris made waves in the Euro market. As a pint-sized hatchback, its 1.6-liter engine is good for an impressive 257 horsepower and 266 pound-feet of torque. It even has a six-speed manual transmission and all-wheel drive. It’s the definition of a perfect recipe for a performance-oriented hatchback. Here in the States, our Yaris is based on the underpinnings of the Mazda 2 – another model that isn’t available Stateside – so a 257-horsepower GR Yaris will never call the U.S. home, unless you build it yourself, of course. However, that doesn’t mean Toyota has forgotten about the U.S. Market altogether, and a recent post on Twitter is clear cut proof that something good is coming our way.

U.S.-Bound Toyota Hot Hatch – What is it?

On May 7, 2020, Toyota fired a rumor and speculation-inducing tweet that hints that the U.S. market will “get a hot hatch to call its own.” The tweet was accompanied by a link to Toyota.com’s upcoming vehicles page that shows off a GR Yaris – you know, the one we can’t have. If you go to the link above, you can sign up to be notified of upcoming GR products.

So, what do we know about all this? Well, this is the first time that Toyota has even come close to confirming a GR product for the U.S. Toyota recently filed trademarks for “GR Corolla” and C-HR GR-Sport” Back in 2019, we got to take a drive in the Corolla hatch, and it did tickle our hot hatch fancy And, more recently, Car & Driver reported that the GR Corolla would arrive in the U.S. for the 2022 model year.

Toyota GR Yaris specifications

We don’t know a lot about the GR Corolla, but it’s suspected that it’ll rock the same 1.6-liter that delivers 257 horsepower and 265 pound-feet of torque in the Euro market’s GR Yaris. But, since the Corolla hatch is heavier and larger, we suspect that Toyota will bump the power closer to 280 horsepower and 290 pound-foot of torque to make up for the extra pounds. That would put it right about in line with the Yaris’ 5.5-second sprinter to 62 mph and top speed of 143 mph.

The thing is that the GR Yaris isn’t expected to arrive until 2022 models go on sale, so if we do see it in 2020, it will be very late in the year. It’s more likely that we’ll see the GR Corolla at one of 2021’s early U.S. Auto Shows – probably the Chicago Auto Show or the New York Auto Show. Then again, Toyota could wait until June 2021 when the new Detroit Auto Show kicks off. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.