An Australian report suggests Toyota may be pondering the creation of a small open-wheel sports car for the road.

Motoring cites a source close to the company as saying Toyota is planning on revealing this new model as early as October, at the Tokyo motor show.

Apparently, it will draw inspiration from the original Lotus Seven (or, let’s face it, the more popular Caterham variants), but it will be able to accommodate up to three people, although we’re not exactly told how – it could be McLaren F1-like…

The model is said to be aimed, like the GT86, to get Japanese youths into cars, but that’s a tricky thing to do. They really need to get something attention-grabbing and overtly fun in order to be attractive enough.

The vehicle proposed in the source article will weigh around 700 kg, use a 1.5-liter four-pot petrol hooked up to a CVT and return a seemingly unbelievable 2 l/100 km or 117.6 mpg US / 141 mpg UK.

If the Japanese motor show reaction is positive, then we could expect to see it revealed in production form at the Frankfurt motor show in 2017.

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