You have probably noticed more and more Japanese used cars hitting the various racing circuits around the world. Many of those cars just happen to be made by Toyota. This is not a mistake. As a matter of fact, the Toyota reputation for reliability and performance has made them extremely popular cars, with professional racers from NASCAR to GrandAm to everything in between. Racing Toyota vehicles has become so popular that the company eventually created a separate department to help tune up all of their vehicles for maximum street and race track performance.
TRD - Toyota Racing Development - is responsible for making sure all of the cars in its production lines are tweaked to the point that they provide their owners the best performance possible. They also are responsible for supporting all of Toyota’s interests when it comes to world wide racing efforts, and they work on producing tuning products and accessories for their supported race cars that include superchargers, wheels, and high performance suspensions. These parts are not just available to the racer. They are available through Toyota dealers for the average person as well. So if you wanted to race and decided to overhaul that used Cresta or Toyota Vista in the back yard to put on the race circuit, you have access to the parts. Even if you have a used Lexus or Scion - also part of the Toyota production line - you can purchase high-performance parts for them to enhance the car or turn it into a racer.
There are two branches of the TRD that currently work in conjunction with Toyota to improve your vehicles as well as provide some great racing action; TRD Japan, which is also known as Toyota Technocraft, and TRD USA. TRD Japan racing division works with the All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship Series as well as the Netz Cup races and other local races in the country. The TRD USA racing division deals with NASCAR car and truck series, the NHRA, and the Grand-Am Cup Sports Touring.
One of the reasons why Toyota was able to really break into the American racing circuit was due to the larger size of the export vehicles that the company was making. Go to a used car sale and take a look at the older Toyotas sitting on the lots. When you compare them to today’s Toyotas, they are considerably smaller. Whether or not this was a conscious decision on Toyota’s part to make American models larger we will never know, but professional race car drivers who appreciate the reliability behind a Toyota are glad it happened.