If you've been paying attention to Toyota's lineup of vehicles over the last few years, you've probably seen the GR name popping up on its performance models lately -- cars like the GR Corolla, the GR Supra, and the GR86. If you're wondering, GR stands for Gazoo Racing, a dedicated performance brand for several of Toyota's vehicles. The GR emblem is pretty well respected thanks to the quality and the success of the Supra, Corolla, and 86, but Toyota is pushing things even further.

More than just a naming convention for performance vehicles, Toyota wants the GR brand to be synonymous with Toyota Racing. Recently, Toyota announced that its North American racing efforts will be rebranded, changing the official name from Toyota Racing to Toyota Gazoo Racing North America. And in the last few years, Toyota has also introduced the GR Cup, a racing series that's meant to be "competitive and affordable" where racers drive modified Toyota GR86s in a single-make race series at various racetracks around America. The idea with Toyota GR Cup, as with any spec series, is to put racers in the same cars on an equal playing field, to see who the best driver is. Naturally, that means that all GR Cup cars are built to the same spec so that no driver has a performance advantage.