The 2025 Toyota Celica Will Meet All Your Expectations

Toyota Celica GR Sport promises to bring back the glory days with a turbocharged engine and all-wheel drive

The 2025 Toyota Celica promises a lot, but will it deliver? In recent years, there has been a bit of a renaisance with regards to Japanese performance cars and Toyota has been responsible for some of the most exciting, attainable sports cars. Mazda is another carmaker, working on reviving iconic nameplates like the RX-7.

With Gazoo Racing heavily involved in Toyota’s latest performance offerings, we see a lot of iconi nameplates making a comeback. After the Miata-rivaling Toyota GR86 and the Germanic, but capable Toyota GR Supra, there are more iconic Toyota models makign a comeback. One of them is the Ceica, and it promises to bring back the glory days from Toyota’s WRC domination, with the Celica GT-Four. But will it live up to expectatons?

An All-new Engine

The seventh-generation Toyota Celica was a bit of a letdown, performance-wise. Sure, the range-topping variant featured a Yamaha-tweaked 2JZZ four-cylinder with upto 192 horsepower, but it wasn’t turbocharged and the car was front-wheel-drive only. The new one promsies to fix that with a potent new engine. Toyota recently announced two new powertrains that would replace most engines in the company’s light passenger vehicles – a 1.5-liter for the more compact segments and a 2.0-liter for the larger models.

It is the latter that would find its place in the new Celica, where it will, reportedly, make 400 horsepower. We expect maximum torque to be around 500 Nm. The same, 2.0-liter, turbocharged engine will also be featured in the 2026 Toyota MR-2, mid-engine sports car that would sit above the 2+2 Celica. Similar to Toyota’s G16E-GTS engine, featured in the GR Yaris and GR Corolla, this new turbo-four unit is Toyota-bult, and not borrowed from another car company.

The same engine will be featured in the 2025 Lexus IS and Lexus ES models, where it will repalce the naturally-aspirated, 2GR-FSE V-6 engine. For those models, the engine will, likely, be de-tuned. It will also be offered in a variety of power levels and as a hybrid. The new Toyota Celica and MR-2 will, likely, be the only cars where Toyota’s new, 2.0-liter, turbocharged engine will make the full 400 horsepower, and not feature a hybrid system.

There is no information that the 2025 Toyota Celica and 2026 Toyota MR-2 will be hybrids, despite the brand’s focus on electrified models. The new, turbo-four engine will work as part of a hybri powertrain in other Toyota and Lexus models, but not in Toyota’s upcoming sports cars.

All-wheel-drive Is Back In The Celica

Toyota Celica and AWD were an unbeatable combination back in the 1990s WRC scene. Of course, some of that was partially due to a cheat, which Toyota employed to get around 50 additional horsepower. The 2025 Toyota Celica will, not only be the most powerful variant of the car ever made, but will also feature the GR-Four, all-wheel-drive system, seen on the GR Yaris and GR Corolla hot hachbacks. This means we can expect the 2025 Celica to sprint from 0 to 100 km/h in around 4.0 seconds. 

Is Toyota Celica GR-Four Coming Back? 

It would seem so, yes. The 2025 Toyota Celica promises to feature everything that made the ST205-generation Toyota Celica GT-Four great, just more of it. With 400 horsepower from a potent, turbocharged, four-cylinder, and performance-oriented all-wheel-drive system, the Celica GR Sport could outperform the GR Supra when it arrives.

The only information, not yet confirmed, pertains to the new Celica’s transmission options. We expect a six-speed manual will be available while the automatic option will either be the familiar, eight-speed automatic or a seven-speed dual-clutch unit that would be featured on the 2026 Toyota Supra GRMN. We still don’t know how the 2025 Toyota Celica would look, but we know it would be a 2+2 coupe like the previous generations as well as a more luxurious take on the Japanese sports car.