Toyota have been mucking about with this conceptual design for a while.
They showed a "Simulated manual" Auto transmission in the GR HV concept.
Seems like most editors and commenters are actually railing this pretty hard. I think it's a novel concept. If well done it could actually be a heap...
Footnote, the global Yaris is *not* based on the Mazda 2 platform.
And as @F1 Silver Arrows mentioned, The GR Yaris was backed by a Multi-Million dollar racing program where if we are being real, was not only about Toyota/Toyoda saying "lol fkoff, we can build properly brilliant sports cars by...
100%. If it's being designed/built to go racing, the is absolutely no way, nor any reason for it to have a manual transmission. Not even a DCT. Sequential box it'll be.
I think this is pure conjecture and rumor mongering on the media's part. Such a vehicle would step on the toes of the GR corolla and on the impreza.... no logical sense at all.