SUPERCARS have landed their biggest fish, and the timing could not be more perfect.

Toyota’s entry into the championship in 2026 is an enormous coup for Supercars still-new ownership and management, who will rightfully spend the next 14 months trumpeting the forthcoming advent of Australia’s largest vehicle brand into the sport at the highest level.

More than that it is a masterstroke of timing perfection with the news and subsequent entry coming exactly when the sport needed it.

At a time when Supercars have begun negotiating a critical new media rights deal for the 2026 season and beyond, Toyota’s entry helps skews the negotiating potential back towards the championship.

It’s fair to say the next media deal is critical for the sport to nail, with the cash generated set to underpin the championships growth for at least the next five years, which includes expanding the calendar and actually having the cash to pay teams to do so in the first place.

As well as being Australia’s largest vehicle brand, the appeal of Toyota joining the championship also goes beyond that to their influence in the media and advertising space.

The more brands involved with a sport get out there and activate their involvement, the better it is for the sport in question and in this case, there are none more powerful than Toyota when it comes to spending the bucks on advertising.

Toyota’s media buying power – the rate at which they purchase advertising in the various media outlets, be it print, broadcast, digital, outdoor or otherwise – is enormous. In 2023, Nielson reported that Australian Automotive brands spent $661m on advertising with Toyota’s spend alone pegged at $100m – a huge percentage of the entire market.

Toyota sit comfortably within the top 15 spending brands in Australia, in 2023 ranked 14^th, just behind Apple and in front of Myer, Sportsbet, Qantas and Uber.

It’s a powerful bargaining tool to have when talking to broadcasters, all of whom are trying to grab a slice of Toyota’s $100m advertising pie on their network.

So when the series’ tries to wrangle $60 or $70m per year out of broadcasters for their exclusive media rights, having Toyota engaged in the championship and looking to leverage their involvement with a suitable ad spend will be a positive to throw into the mix.  

Beyond that, Toyota also adds cachet. The brand is renowned for its reliability in backing local sport and for long-term investment in its deals. They’ve backed the Adelaide Crows since 1991, the North Queensland Cowboys since 2003 and the entire AFL Premiership for two decades now.

That opens more value for Supercars, specifically the ability to cross promote across Toyota’s various platforms – so expect to see someone from the Adelaide Crows, North Queensland Cowboys or Australian Cricket team going for a hot lap in a WAU Supra sooner rather than later.

More than that, it opens potential to tap into their existing sponsorships to promote the racing enterprises – imagine going to the AFL’s socials with an offer for Supercars tickets or Toyota hospitality. It’s potentially incredibly powerful.

They’re also already invested in motorsport via the Australian Rally Championship and the GR Cup for Toyota 86s, which has proven wildly successful and is also locked in long-term.

The brand made it very clear in their announcement that their roots are in the rally and GR Cup contests and also that their Supercars commitment was for five years, giving the brand a half-decade of ‘whole of the sport’ approach to racing, which is a good thing indeed.

It is also a win for the marketing power of motorsport in general.

Some still trumpet a requirement for ‘market relevance’ to be a driving and critical factor for the sport’s existence, but these days ‘market relevance’ means something different to what it did back in the day.

The times of winning Bathurst in a Commodore on Sunday and selling a Commodore on Monday are gone: Now, it’s win with a Ford Mustang on Sunday and get someone to spend $100k on a loaded Ford Ranger Raptor the next week.

Toyota doesn’t sell a V8 Camry in America and yet it’s been their key tool for marketing in NASCAR for years.

Having Toyota – a brand that doesn’t sell a single V8 in Australia – embrace the Supercars platform with a V8-powered Supra is a big tick for both the Gen 3 platform and the ideal that the championship should remain V8 powered, loud, exciting and vibrant racing rather than a window into the real-world of motoring at present.

I’m sure the haters will still find a way to poke holes in this announcement and I’m sure there will be bumps along the road – though it’s with some irony that their timing also comes just as the sport puts a full stop on the whole ‘how to do Parity’ thing.. I’m sure they thank Ford and GM for copping that pain to make their entry more seamless.

For its flaws, Supercars remains the biggest game in town and now it’s landed the biggest brand in town as well.

And at a juncture when a new media deal is in the offing and calendar expansion is being discussed, it could not have come at a better time.