Toyota GR Corolla Puts Up Impressive Numbers on a Dyno

The three-cylinder in the Toyota GR Corolla is a little ripper. Toyota claims an amazing 300 hp from this turbocharged 1.6-liter, but based on a dyno test from a new GR Corolla owner, that figure might be underrated. In a post in a GR Corolla owner’s Facebook group, the car’s owner got figures of 258.66 hp at 6320 rpm, and 279.38 lb-ft of torque from a DynoJet dynamometer.

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You may already know this, but it bears repeating. Chassis dynos like this, where the car is driven onto rollers and tested, measure wheel horsepower, a figure that reflects all the parasitic losses from driveline components, everything between the flywheel and the wheels. Figuring out precise drivetrain losses with the GR Corolla would be extremely difficult, but very generally speaking, the horsepower measured at the wheels in an all-wheel drive car is around 20 to 25 percent of horsepower measured at the crank. (This is more than is the case with two-wheel drive cars, as all-wheel drive cars have more driveline components.)

Assuming a fairly realistic loss of 25 percent, the GR Corolla puts out 344.85 hp; if we decide to be more pessimistic and say driveline losses are 20 percent, that figure jumps to 323.325. I’m inclined to cite the 25 percent figure here, as the GR Corolla has a fairly complicated all-wheel drive system. Hell, assuming that the engine does indeed put out “just” 300 hp at the flywheel and you get a dyno figure of 258.66, that’s a drivetrain loss of just 13.78 percent. So either the components between the engine and the wheels in the GR Corolla transfer power very efficiently, or the engine output is underrated. The reality is probably some combination of the two.

Now, the usual caveats of measuring horsepower, which is affected by a number of factors, including temperature, altitude, and engine condition. The owner commented that the car had around 880 miles and was past the break-in point, but if you could take this exact car in this exact state and measure it on identical dynos in New York and Los Angeles right now, you’d likely get different figures.

Basically, none of these numbers should be taken as gospel. Also, having driven the GR Corolla, I can tell you with certainty that this three-cylinder is a little ripper, and the fact that it makes at least 100 horsepower per cylinder—and more likely somewhere between 106 hp and 114 hp/cylinder—is extraordinary.