Toyota’s latest installment of Grip, its “anime” about human drivers in a world of automated cars, has been released. Unlike previous minute-long episode, this chapter is nearly nine minutes long and features plenty of tire-smoking action from animated cars from the GR lineup. My kids were thoroughly entertained, but it’s the ending that we have a GRipe about.
The original Grip season was released in 2024 as minute-long episodes with five episodes per season. If you haven’t been following the saga, you can catch up with season one, season two, and season three. It had more surprise reveals than The Price is Right as loyalties flip-flopped and lost dads reappeared, but at least the cars were cool. Famous Toyotas, including the AE86, Altezza, MR2, Celica GT-Four, and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearances by a A80 Supra and 2000GT.
The stars of the show have always been the current GR lineup, the GR Corolla, GR Supra, and GR86. Each was driven by a human who managed to out-maneuver armies of computer-controlled, identical, and vaguely sinister “synth” vehicles that ruled the world. Human intuition and skill are able to make read situations and make split-second decisions that AI can’t, and thus prevail.
The entire series was a not-so-subtle ad selling cars to people who love driving. But (spoiler alert) the end of the Grip movie sells out that entire concept. It concludes that a mixture of human and computer input is what makes the ideal pilot, Luke Skywalker says, “hmm, maybe the Empire isn’t so bad after all,” and Neo decides not to take down the Matrix.
It’s an odd way to end it. We get it, Toyota has to sell cars to the masses too, but it’s one of the few carmakers out there with multiple performance-oriented models in its lineup. Toyota is arguably the mainstream performance brand, and a great turnaround for a company labeled “beige” not too long ago. But it’s okay to have different marketing for different audiences.
The other bit of news is that at the very end a fourth GR model is teased. A computer turns on by itself and lists out GR Supra, GR86, GR Corolla, and begins the name of another GR model before the movie cuts to black. It’s a bigger cliffhanger than the end of The Sopranos, and likely means that the Grip story isn’t over. Could it be the Celica? Or Starlet?
In the meantime, if you’re jonesing for other Toyota animated ads, there’s the ones that Toyota Japan did for the GR86 (re-up here) in partnership with Initial D and MF Ghost.
