It’s Snow Joke? Is the Toyota GR Corolla Rally-Capable From the Showroom Floor?

The 2023 Toyota GR Corolla is fantastic but not transcendent. At least, that’s what we thought. It’s a hot hatch that’s become a hot commodity, but a car doesn’t have to be the best to be popular. Then again, had we experienced all it has to offer? Toyota invited us to the Bridgestone Winter Driving School in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, to experience the GR Corolla’s rally pedigree on snow. It turns out more goodness lurked inside it this whole time; we just hadn’t been in the most proper arena yet.

The Toyota GR Corolla’s brilliance comes in the form of its selectable front-rear torque distribution to give drivers ultimate control, and its front and rear Torsen limited-slip differentials that distribute torque across the axles. The effects aren’t as noticeable on pavement when conditions don’t change much, which is why we were only impressed and not blown away by the car up to this point. But what rally course ever had impeccable tarmac? Rally cars need to respond to changing road conditions, translate them accurately to the driver, and respond to the driver’s input at a moment’s notice. The GR Corolla’s drivetrain does this exceptionally well when surface conditions get dicey.

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Baby Steps

Before we could go flat-out through an L6->Jmp, flirting with disaster as the GR Corolla teetered between insanity and crashing with style, we were granted the high honor of brushing up on our skills with grocery-store-spec—we’ll call them Group G—Toyota Camrys and RAV4s. Everyone wanted as much seat time in a GR as possible, but the Bridgestone Winter Driving School staff was wise in its approach. After all, none of the students were professional rally drivers—there would be no jumps. A good idea, as we learned later in the day just how easy it is to cross the line into crashing with style, even in a professional's hands.

But how could we not feel like rally drivers? The Bridgestone Winter Driving School is a perennial operation dependent on natural Colorado snow in the middle of off-season farmland, and driver instruction happens in a yurt. Yep, sounds like a rally event. The Group G cars are always part of the lineup, along with Toyota Tacomas,4Runners, and even a GR86. But the GR Corolla is made for it.

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After splitting the group, one half went to compare ABS and non-ABS stops in specially equipped RAV4s while our group would slide all-wheel-drive Camrys around a snow-covered skidpad. Because the course is on natural terrain, this skidpad was almost entirely on a slope. Driving counterclockwise, we began part of the way up the downward slope, heading across the course’s flattest section to initiate a turn into the uphill transition. As we approached the left-hand turn, our instruction was to lift off the gas just before entry; the deceleration would shift weight forward, giving traction to the front and making the rear easier to slide. A sharp, 90-degree lefthand twist of the steering wheel started an oversteer situation, requiring immediate countersteer as the rear wheels stepped out, and then we were back on the gas for a smooth exit sliding uphill.

One point of this maneuver is to shuffle the steering wheel instead of “palming” it or going hand-over-hand. On slick surfaces like snow, it’s easier to keep track of your steering this way, and it lets you unwind the wheel manually for a better feeling of where the wheels are pointing and where the traction is. One of the biggest tips we learned is that you need less steering angle than you think you do. In snow, an understeer situation is often remedied by reducing the steering angle and putting the tires in a better position for traction, not by cranking it all the way to one side and hoping for the best. Steering less when you need to turn more is a counterintuitive idea but an important lesson to learn.

We next swapped into a RAV4 to work on some braking drills. The ABS stops were standard fare, simply jamming the pedal and holding it to the floor until the vehicle stopped. We flipped a switch to turn off the ABS and practiced the old-fashioned pumping technique, which is braking until the wheels skid, releasing until the wheels gain traction, and repeating until the vehicle stops completely. As fast as an ABS pump articulates, you might think pumping quicky would be the key. But if you modulate the pedal too quickly, pressure in the brake lines won’t release, and the wheels stay locked or don’t move as freely as they need to. Instead, your foot needs to come completely off the pedal, and it was a solid two or three seconds until the wheels started rolling again. Both exercises were lessons in patience and thinking ahead, realizing that driving in snow successfully means you’re always setting up for your next move before your current one is even over.

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A GReat Time Ahead

After warming up with some basic maneuvers and instruction, we developed what was surely a false sense of mastery over the ever-changing track conditions. Lined up and ready to go (following a lunch break in the yurt), we experienced the entire 2023 GR Corolla lineup across six examples that included Core grades with and without front and rear limited-slip differentials, Circuit, and Morizo editions. First up for us was a white GR Corolla Circuit.

Despite our best efforts with the Group G cars, we still wouldn’t be turned completely loose on Bridgestone’s track, and we split into two groups to head to different drills. The GR Corolla and its 1.6-liter I-3 engine with 100 hp per cylinder is too quick for most people, at least on snow. During closed-course driving events for the media, such as this one, you can typically drive as hard as your nerve allows before your self-preservation instinct kicks in. But in snow, you don’t need to be anywhere near that level to get into serious trouble. We still managed to clock 70 mph on a straight section, and the GR Corolla’s control and stability at that speed can easily make anyone feel braver than they should.

Changing any drive settings in the GR Corolla is simple, but there’s an important sequence to note. If you go into Sport mode before turning off traction control, you will activate Expert mode. It defeats the aids to a point, but not completely, and will intervene when things get too wild. This might be helpful on a paved track as a safety net to avoid wadding up your daily driver, but it ruins your flow in snow. Instead, hold the ESC button for a few seconds to disable the system entirely and then turn Sport mode on. The Bridgestone instructors told us they had plenty of fun in Expert mode, but mostly it just caused massive understeer on the ice.

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Drivetrain Modes

The ability to choose your torque distribution makes the Toyota GR Corolla an incredibly versatile car, and you get three options from the GR-Four all-wheel-drive system: 60:40 for front-wheel-drive characteristics, 30:70 for a rear-wheel-drive feel, or a balanced 50:50 split in Track mode. We found the 30:70 split to be the most effective on this day, because the track iced up as the day went on and there wasn’t enough traction to make driving the front wheels helpful in tight turns. Tires only have so much traction to give, and when the surface already creates a disadvantage, keeping traction under the front wheels while redirecting forward momentum for a turn and relying on them to put down some power is too much to ask.

You’re always shopping for grip on a dynamic surface, and changing the power split was like going to a completely different store whereas another lap in the same mode would just take you down a different aisle. What didn’t change were the clutch, steering feel, and suspension, and all three were outstanding in the snow. The clutch is always easy and light but responsive enough to feel every stage of engagement. The Bridgestone Blizzak winter tires added enough extra traction that taking off was never an issue. For as stiff as the GR Corolla can feel at times on pavement, we didn’t get jostled around on the rougher parts of the course. Instead, the GR Corolla always felt stable, with a neutral weight distribution that gave a predictable response that let us interpret surface conditions and grip through the steering wheel.

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One drill that highlighted the Torsen differentials in the front and rear was a hard acceleration before a lefthand Scandinavian-flick into a long, uphill sweeping right-hander, followed by a tight S-curve that transitioned into a wide hairpin downhill. We drove this in a Morizo and a Core without the Torsen differentials—the differences were stark. The Core was easier to drive in some ways, because you couldn’t drive it has hard through the turns to begin with, and the open differentials were more predictable without any active torque distribution across the axle.

To get the most out of the Torsens, you must have the setup and confidence to drive the car a lot harder. Without adequate speed, you won’t throw around the car’s weight enough to create the right conditions to notice its benefit. With an open differential, torque tends to find the path of least resistance and makes a low-traction situation worse by sending all the torque to the wheel without traction. In a sliding turn on snow, you then get a lot of wheelspin on one side, but not much torque gets to the ground. Once the Torsen detects a differential in speed between wheels, it instantly applies torque by a predetermined multiple to the axle with more grip. So now you have more total torque making it to the ground, with a bias to the side with more grip. This helped us get on the gas a lot harder through a turn, with a distinct feel through the chassis that power was making it to the ground as the tires dug into the snow. We would soon learn what this could do in the hands of a professional with the entire course open.

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Driving With the Pros

Even if we didn’t get to do it ourselves, going full-out in the Toyota GR Corolla with far more experienced drivers that had spent a couple of days learning the car was an enticing prospect, and we jumped at the chance to be in the first ride-along. Our driver opted for the Track setting, or 50:50 torque distribution, in Sport mode with all traction and stability controls off. This was a choice based on personal preference and track conditions, which had a lot of ice and almost none of the fresh powder dropped overnight.

If you’ve never been on a high-speed ride in snow, it’s wild. Keeping the car on a consistent trajectory requires working the steering wheel constantly, and the whole endeavor seems closer to a reactive experience rather than executing any intentional plan. There might be a line in mind, but you need to think ahead while leaving room for adjustments. Witnessing everything our driver had to do to keep the GR Corolla out of the snowbanks, how far ahead he had to begin initiating a turn, and the sheer speed at which it was happening, it was suddenly apparent why no one let us loose to try the same. Then we remembered this was a production car, and a Corolla of all things. We weren’t even in the Morizo, but a Circuit with three adults in it.

If you think you’re always in control in the snow, you aren’t, no matter who you are. As we rocketed down the straightaway into the first corner, our driver cut the wheel and yanked the handbrake, backing us into the turn. Out the driver’s side window was the other GR Corolla that had been on the course ... now beached in a snowbank. What looked like the track’s typical surface was a snow cushion that sucked the car in. The Corolla was fine, and it was rescued swiftly by a 4Runner. As entertaining as the spectacle was, we’re just glad it wasn’t us, maintaining our record of not murdering a single cone during the day. (Maybe we simply didn’t drive hard enough.)

As good as the Toyota GR Corolla can be on the road, it’s an even more versatile and capable weapon when you give it a surface that requires more effort to navigate. We’ll happily take our chances against cones and snowbanks to get more seat time in one of the best hot hatches around—one that’s even better than we thought before.