When you hear the word “Chaser”, what would probably come first into your mind is a wild 800PS drift machine jumping off at Ebisu Minami’s famous jump drift section, or maybe a sports-derived version of the exquisite Toyota Crown cars. However, there was a time when the Chaser had motorsports pedigree, when it was used in arguably one of Japan’s go-to motorsport segments of the 90s. This is the story of the JTCC Chaser, the FR racing saloon.
When the Japanese Touring Car Championship first started in 1994, following the abolishment of the iconic Japanese Touring Championship series, Japanese manufacturers had a hard time trying to keep up with the likes of Alfa Romeo, BMW, and Vauxhall rivals, seeing that they’re at a disadvantage with their still in-development front-wheel-drive systems. Cars such as the Ferio EG turned out to be a major disaster in competition, fazed by the much superior Europeans at the time. Toyota saw this chain of failures as a learning curve, and hence, the Chaser was introduced into the JTCC.
Before the Chaser came into the battlefield, many others, even Toyota themselves, have successfully managed to fend off the Euro boys with their newly-improved cars, the likes of the EXiV, Carina ED, Primera, and of course, the Accord. However, in some cases, these cars were still outclassed by the sheer engineering of BTCC-specced touring cars. The Chaser became Toyota’s answer to BMW’s very own 3-series contender by adopting their very own winning formula.
As you may have expected, the Chaser was indeed an FR, in fact, it was the only Japanese entrant in the JTCC to utilize such a drivetrain. Having an all-round double wishbone suspension meant that it could have much more suspension tuning flexibility and handling prowess compared to the current EXiV and ED contenders. Equipped with a DTM-style bodykit, the racer became wider than the standard JZX100 by about 40mm, totaling to about 1800 millimeters worth of width. Being t h i c c also meant that it could fit wider and bigger 215/645R18 tires all round.
The real party piece in this racing four door is the engine. Due to regulations, the standard 1JZ-GTE inline-6 is not eligible for use, and as such, the engineers at Toyota decided to shoe in a naturally-aspirated, midship front mounted, race-tuned 3S-GE engine making a good 300PS worth of power at a screaming 8500 revolutions, connected to a one-off Hewland gearbox made specifically for this car to accommodate the then unorthodox setup. The midship front layout meant for better distribution of weight as well as a lower center of gravity, and the longitudinally mounted engine helped to create more freedom in designing the car’s intake and exhaust systems.
The future seemed bright for Toyota, but, in 1997, many manufacturers had started to withdrew from the competition entirely. The Chaser did enjoy a fair bit of success along its racing career, with its best finish being 3rd place during the ‘97 season of JTCC, piloted by Le Mans veteran Masanori Sekiya. In 1998, only Toyota was left remaining in the series, while the rest had completely called it quits. Hence, the JTCC eventually becoming a Toyota one-make series. Hence, soon enough, JTCC finally came to a stop, and the real potential of what would have been Toyota’s BMW 3-series beater.
In a time when Chasers and Mark IIs are considered more as cheap drift cars than they are luxury sports saloons now, the JTCC Chaser was arguably of a different breed than the rest, designed with the theme “dynamic sports sedan” in mind and to (initially) dominate the Euro-infested competition of JTCC. Although it didn’t enjoyed much of its success for long, nor was it sadly even considered a thing in the Japanese car scene of today, the JTCC Chaser undoubtedly paved way to many of Toyota’s future innovations, one of them being the SXE10 Altezza, as it became the main inspiration to the car’s longitudinally mounted blacktop Beams 3S-GE, bringing in the same concept as what the Chaser did many years prior.
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