Toyota’s Output Numbers for the 2022 GR Corolla are Extremely Low

Yesterday, Motor1.com's Christopher Smith published an article saying “In an email to Motor1.com, a Toyota spokesperson explained the up-spec Circuit Edition will have a production run of 1,500 units. The GR Corolla Core trim will be more than 5,000 units, though a specific cap isn't mentioned. These numbers represent the first year of production.”

Although he later goes on to say that Toyota will only release the Circuit Edition for the 2023 model year, this is just for the first year of production. A general rule when buying a car is to not buy the first-year production of a car that has just been debuted. For instance, I wouldn’t buy the 2022 Ford Mustang Mach-E however I would just wait a year and buy the 2023 production models. People do this because you never know what problems come in a newly designed car.

My suspicion is that Toyota wants to either limit sales in its first year since this is a highly anticipated car or bring out more hype and just wait till next year. It could also have to do with chip shortages. By the way, we recently wrote an article about how the Toyota Tundra was the only truck to not suffer sales loss in February of 2022.

So, if the anticipation is there and people seem to like the GR Corolla, why won’t Toyota allocate its remaining semiconductor stock to the GR Corolla? Think of the GR Corolla as sugary cereal. As a kid, you probably really wanted that cereal and your friends wanted that too, but your parents wouldn’t get it. The same thing is here. Right now, people need economical cars and as far as demand for hybrids and electrics go, it's one of the top priorities for Toyota.

Just like how eating sugary cereal was bad for you, people know that a hot hatch sports car is probably not a good buy right now, especially in this economy. Toyota knows this and therefore it is better off pushing resources to cars like the Prius and other hybrids rather than GR Corollas and sports coupes. Don’t get me wrong people will buy GR Corollas, just not in the numbers you or Toyota would hope for.

However, I think the GR Corolla will do great. We recently did another article on the GR86 and the prices in Europe. In that article, I mentioned that Redditors were optimistic about European sales.

Hopefully, gas prices will start to go down and the thought of purchasing a 2022 GR Corolla might not be a bad idea after all.

What do you think? Should Toyota produce more GR Corollas? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Harutiun Hareyan is reporting Toyota news at Torque News. His automotive interests and vast experience test-riding new cars give his stories a sense of authenticity and unique insights. Follow Harutiun on Twitter at @HareyanHarutiun for daily Toyota news.