Horse 951 -

This is a case of a post having to be pulled before I even wrote it.

Last year, Team Vodafone who won Bathurst and who's driver Jamie Whincup won the V8 Supercar Championship, apparently spent some time in talks with Toyota:

http://www.v8supercars.com.au/content/hero_news/july08/teamvodafone_courts_toyota/
In the wake of news that Ford will not back TeamVodafone next year, team owner Roland Dane has confirmed that he has been in talks with Toyota.
As reported in the latest edition of V8X magazine, Toyota Motorsport Manager, Todd Connolly, admitted that he has regular meetings with “a prominent V8 Supercar team owner”.
Dane confirmed that he is that man.
“We have not only spoken to Toyota, but other people in the industry over a long period of time just to understand what the demand is for the market,” he said.

I spent a bit of time, quietly hacking apart what a Toyota Aurion V8 Supercar might look like and came up with this:


Not that this matters much anyway, for I happened to hear the following news on the radio, and I would have provided a link but Fairfax Digital are not nice.
'The Australian Rally Championship has been left in tatters by the withdrawal of the last official factory team in the series and top-name drivers Neal Bates and Simon Evans.
Toyota withdrew its support from rallying yesterday, ending all involvement in Australian motorsport. It was part of a move by Toyota to cut non-essential costs.
It followed Ford and Holden in slashing its spending on motorsport but took it to the next level, trumping its rivals' multi-million dollar cuts on their V8 Supercar programs with a total withdrawal.
The decision ends 20 years in the Australian Rally Championship, the speedway support of national champion Brooke Tatnell, a program of drag racing and even support of the youth-focused Australian Drift Championship.
The biggest casualty is Bates, who won three national rally titles for Toyota and provided the cars to give Evans two more.
"I'm devastated by it. I only got the news last night (Tuesday)," Bates said yesterday. "I'm sad but I feel privileged to have had the success we have had from all sorts of cars, from the original Celica through to the latest Corolla we designed and built at our vase in Canberra. The worst thing is that people are going to lose their jobs and this is like a family."
Bates and his co-driver Coral Taylor still plan to compete in the opening event of this years ARC, Rally Tasmania next month, and the team's home event in Canberra in March.
He is also hopeful of finding buyers for Corolla rally cars.
"I want to keep going, but I don't plan to send myself broke," Bates said. "We've already had a few possibilities come along today, but there is a huge difference between a possibility and a signed deal."
Evans' plans are unknown, although he has rallied before in Subaru cars and has offers to compete in the China Rally Championship with his co-driving wife Sue. '

Herald Sun - January 29 2009.

So I guess that means that this whole post is one of what could have been rather than this might happen.