2025 Toyota GR Corolla Might Be The Coolest Way To Zoom Through Winter

Easy on the throttle, brake, early apex, flick left then turn right, wait for the front end to bite, unwind the steering, back on the gas. Driving quickly on ice sounds so easy when you break it down into a few simple instructions, but putting that into practice isn’t the work of a moment. My track-focused autocrosser brain practically short circuited the first time I squared off a turn all the way across the track from the apex. For most winter drivers the goal is simply keeping the car on the road and braking early enough to minimize understeer. In a brand new 300-horsepower all-wheel-drive Toyota hot hatch with the traction control turned off, however, the sequence of events that adds up to a fast lap time don’t come anywhere near typical grip or winter driving. Going in to my two-day sojourn at the Bridgestone Winter Driving School I knew the fundamentals of low-grip winter driving, as I’ve been hooning around in the snow for almost every winter of adult life, but it still took quite a bit of un-learning to re-train my brain to go fast in the slippy stuff. 

I already knew that the updated 2025 Toyota GR Corolla was fun on a race track, because I tested one at Charlotte Motor Speedway last fall. Compared back-to-back on the grippy stuff, I still preferred the GR86 for its lightweight feel and more responsive steering. Once you trade asphalt for ice, however, the GRolla’s stellar all-wheel drive and rowdy turbocharged 3-cylinder come into their own. Toyota shipped me off to Steamboat Springs, Colorado to run its lineup of GR cars (GR86, GR Corolla and GR Supra) through the paces on an ice race track this time, and shod all of them with fresh Bridgestone Blizzaks to maximize the experience. To add a little more fun to the mix, the driving school made it a timed competition.

As car enthusiasts we had no idea how good we were eating in the 1990s and early 2000s when rally-homologation all-wheel-drive sporting machines were practically growing on trees. Toyota has torture tested the GR Corolla in the crucible of competition to make it an impressive thing to drive on track, but it really excels when you get an opportunity to kick it sideways at speed. Despite the ice course being slippery as hell, the Corolla never made me feel like I was unsure where it would go. Once I got accustomed to the car and the course, it just did almost everything I wanted it to do. Place a wheel right there, whip the back end around with a scandi-flick right here, scrabble some grip and accelerate away right here. This zany little car just wanted to dance with me, despite the dancefloor being built from frozen water. Picture in your head a raccoon on linoleum, and you kind of understand what driving this manic attack instrument is like.

While inducing throttle-on oversteer isn’t exactly the quickest way around a winter rally course, it sure is fun as hell. The winter driving school “race” course included a really slick slow corner leading into a big sweeping left-hand bend that led onto the main straight, rising then falling up and over a crest. Giving the throttle a boot full of foot and four-wheel drifting out to the edge of the track, with the nose of the car skipping past the apex cone, man, that’s one of the most pure feelings of joy the 2025 Human Experience can deliver. I wish I could feel like that all the time, but maybe on a gravel course so it wouldn’t have to be so damn cold! 

When I reviewed the GR Corolla back in October, I said that it wasn’t the perfect car, but it’s damn close. I’d like to officially amend that statement slightly. The GR Corolla makes a damn fine daily driver, a capable track car, and a brilliant autocrosser, but this is as close as you can get to perfection when the grip goes away. It’s just so f*cking fun.

Every driving school begins with the basics of driving fast, giving everyone a baseline of what an apex is, how racing lines work, and the concepts of oversteer and understeer. Bridgestone’s winter driving school is no different, but with a focus on low-grip driving and emergency correction, the context of each concept is slightly tweaked. You really need to adjust your brain to unlearn and re-learn a few of these basic concepts. After an entire day of running drills on course in AWD Camry Hybrids, 4WD 4Runners, and RWD GR86s and GR Supras to experience the different vehicle dynamics on course, the second day saw a lot more action in the all-wheel-drive GR Corolla rocket ships. I would have loved even more time in the Corollas — another week would have been great — but I certainly see the reasoning behind giving people as wide a variety of experiences in this controlled environment as possible. Overall, I’d say the school is a must-do if you live anywhere with inclement weather, or even if you just occasionally vacation to the mountains for a ski trip. Having these kinds of reactions and slippy-weather driving skills could literally save your life one day. It’s a good school, though not cheap at $3,456. What other potentially life-saving skills can you learn for thirty-five hundred bucks, though? More importantly, where else can you cane the ever-loving sh*t out of a 300-horsepower all-wheel-drive hot hatchback in a safe and worry-free environment for so little?

This school has been in operation for over 40 years, and has some top-notch facilities in which to learn. The classroom sessions are kept relatively brief, maximizing your time on course putting hands on steering wheels. The drills and lessons are easy to follow, the instructors are patient and take things as slow as you need them to be, and perhaps most importantly, the school is just plain fun. Even though it was just two days, it felt a little bit like old-school summer camp. Getting to know my fellow classmates and learning new skills together built a bit of camaraderie and trust, as well as a bit of competitive rivalry and revelry. If you have the means to drop a few grand on a couple days in Steamboat Springs, forget about the slopes and hit the ice course.

So what about that competition? I was paired up with Grassroots Motorsports Editorial Director David S. Wallens for the day. Each pairing had to put down a time-trial laptime around the ice course in an automatic GR Corolla, and our times would be added together to be compared against all of the other two-driver competitors. Based on our experience all day, the track slightly deteriorated with each passing lap, and I was the last to drive. David and I both put down pretty respectable times, and our team tied for the lead with the two-driver team of Toyota Jeff and Superfast Matt with a combined time of 3:02.25, exactly identical down to the hundredth of a second. Matt, true to his name, was the fastest runner of the day, but I wasn’t too far behind him.

It’s baked deep in my personality to be a hyper competitive person, and that doesn’t always bring out the best in me, but my team won, so suck it! The instructors said this was the tightest and most competitive class they’d ever hosted. Maybe automotive media know how to drive after all.