The origins of TTE trace back to Andersson Motorsport, a company established by Ove Andersson in Sweden to support his own motorsport career. Andersson's relationship with Toyota began in 1972 when he drove a Toyota Celica in the RAC Rally, and from 1973 the company was appointed to manage Toyota's works WRC entries under the Toyota Team Europe name. In 1975 the team and its operations moved to Brussels, Belgium, then again in 1979 to Cologne, Germany, where it was formally established as Andersson Motorsport GmbH. TTE began as an official team in February 1975, with Hannu Mikkola winning their first rally that August — the 1000 Lakes Rally in Finland — at the wheel of a Corolla 1600.
TTE's competitive rise came in the late 1980s following the introduction of the Toyota Celica GT-Four, a four-wheel-drive turbocharged machine capable of challenging the dominant Lancia Delta. The GT-Four ST165 gave Carlos Sainz his first WRC Drivers' Championship in 1990, a result that cemented Toyota's standing as a front-line WRC constructor.
The successor GT-Four ST185 debuted at the 1992 Rallye Monte Carlo and delivered an even more emphatic period of success. Sainz won a second Drivers' title in 1992. In 1993, Juha Kankkunen took the Drivers' title and Toyota secured the Manufacturers' Championship — their first. Didier Auriol added a third consecutive Drivers' title for Toyota machinery in 1994.
That dominance came to an abrupt halt in 1995 when TTE was handed a twelve-month ban from the World Rally Championship after scrutineers discovered that the Celica ST205 had been fitted with an illegal air restrictor concealing both a bypass mechanism and spring-loaded devices to avoid detection. While suspended in 1996 — and for most of 1997 as the successor Corolla was not yet ready — Toyota continued to support the ST205 in selected events via the Italian HF Grifone team, Toyota Team Sweden, Marlboro Toyota Team Belgium, and Tein Sport.
TTE returned with the Corolla WRC in the 1997 Rally of Finland, initially under a new sponsorship identity as Toyota Castrol Team. They did not contest the Manufacturers' Championship that year, but re-entered it in 1998 with Sainz and Auriol driving, finishing second in both the Drivers' and Manufacturers' standings. In 1999 Toyota finally claimed the Manufacturers' title again — their third overall. That proved to be the final season: at the end of 1999, Toyota withdrew from rallying entirely to redirect resources toward Formula One, with Toyota Motorsport GmbH (as Andersson Motorsport GmbH had been renamed after Toyota's full acquisition in 1993) taking charge of the F1 project from 2002.
Carlos Sainz, Juha Kankkunen, Didier Auriol, Kenneth Eriksson, and Hannu Mikkola were among the most prominent drivers to carry TTE's colours during the team's championship-winning years. The Celica GT-Four models in both ST165 and ST185 form won three Drivers' titles (1990, 1992, 1994) and two Manufacturers' titles (1993, 1999) across the competitive era, placing Toyota firmly among the major constructors of the WRC's classic period.
Toyota Motorsport GmbH continued operating as an engineering facility after the WRC withdrawal, entering Le Mans Prototype machinery in the World Endurance Championship and running the Panasonic Toyota Racing Formula One team from 2002 to 2009. A return to the WRC was announced for 2017 with the Toyota Yaris WRC, though day-to-day team operations for that programme were handled by Tommi Mäkinen Racing in Finland rather than the Cologne facility. After Toyota purchased Tommi Mäkinen Racing in 2021 and renamed it Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team, the lineage from Ove Andersson's original enterprise to the modern championship-winning squad was complete.