Toyota Subaru Coupe starts testing at the Nurburgring

The Toyota iQ supermini is great. But since the Celica, Supra and MR2 died, the Japanese giant’s line-up has been lacking cars you’d actually want to own.

[See how the Toyobaru Coupe will look in the latest issue of iMOTOR magazine]

But that’s all about to change, thanks to its new total petrolhead CEO, Akio Toyoda. Toyoda is the grandson of the founder of Toyota. And having worked his way up through the family business, Toyoda is now the big cheese. What’s more, he’s a total motorsport nut, and races pretty competitively in events like the Nürburgring 24 hours. And it’s good to know he’s signed off the new Toyota/Subaru coupe joint project you see here testing in Germany too.

At present, the “Toyobaru” is just a concept which will be shown at the Tokyo Motor Show. But what we do know is that the road version will be built as a simpl, lightweight sports car. So it’ll be put together at Subaru’s Japanese factory, and built on a modified version of the Legacy platform. A revised, naturally aspirated boxer engine, good for about 200hp, will reside under its bonnet which will drive the rear wheels through a six-speed manual box.

At around £20,000, the Audi TT-sized Toyota/Subaru coupe will be simple, affordable and drifting around a Tesco car park near you sometime in late 2011.