No comparison
Let’s be clear: Toyota is once again the reigning world champion in the World Rally Championship and the World Endurance Championship. Toyota will again sell the most cars in 2022, worldwide and by an ever-increasing margin, it’s obvious now that three quarters are up. Toyota is late with its first all-electric car, but you can expect them to do really well (even if the Japanese now seem to want to start all over again). And Toyota is doing its best to keep the petrol cars alive too – to build cars that are not only efficient but fun to drive. Hey, GR Yaris, now the GR86, plus the manual Supra – Toyota, which only a few years ago was the leader among the most modest car companies, has in a surprisingly short time become the greatest hope for all those who still enjoy driving.
Of course, Toyota has the financial and technological means to drive just about every other car manufacturer to the wall. Much, arguably almost all, of this “rethink” is due to the real boss, Akio Toyoda. He personally launched the GT86 in 2011. He did a lot of development work on this vehicle himself. Perhaps he also had his doubts when the vehicle, which was also offered as the Subaru BRZ, did not really sell well. To put it clearly: it sold really badly, miserably. But Akio Toyoda stuck to his idea of a light, not overpowered, not overpriced sports car that was only committed to driving pleasure, when all the analysts, controllers and other know-it-alls tried to make him believe that such a vehicle was not profitable.
In all likelihood, the new Toyota GR86/Subaru BRZ will not add a single yen to the credit side of the two companies, quite the opposite, but the top boss does not need to worry about that, Toyota can easily afford it. Gazoo Racing is also a marketing vehicle, the Japanese pay for it out of their coffee coffers – and here and now we dare to say that GR will become even more important for the image of the Japanese in the next few years than M GmbH, AMG, RS for the German premium manufacturers. Because – with the exception of BMW – no one has an offshoot that is currently so committed to the true “petrolheads” as Toyota/Toyoda. “Girls just wanna have fun”, sang Cindy Lauper back in 1983, and for the boys it’s true in 2022, too.
Even in their new form, the new Toyota GR86/Subaru BRZ remain a somehow old-fashioned, very conservative vehicle. A classic naturally aspirated front engine, rear-wheel drive, a manual gearbox, transaxle. Of course, the Japanese have kept to the concept, and you have to look closely to distinguish between the GT86 and the GR86, the old and the new BRZ. But with the meticulousness so typical of the brands, Toyota/Subaru have improved the vehicle wherever there was a little need. This was especially the case with the engine and the front suspension – the latter was lightened and stiffened at the same time, the steering was sharpened once again (13.5:1). This now makes the GR86 extremely precise, almost too much so, am no longer used to the slightest steering movements having such an impact.
The four-cylinder boxer engine has been upgraded from 1998 to 2387 cm3. This not only results in more power (234 instead of 200 hp at 7000 rpm), but above all in more torque with a flatter torque curve. Before it was 205 Nm at 6600/min, now it is 250 Nm already at 3700/min. While with the GT86/BRZ I you always had to drive with a knife between your teeth, the GR86/BRZ now has enough power to be able to drive peacefully. Of course, more power also means better performance: the GR86/BRZ goes from 0 to 100 km/h in 6.3 seconds and has a maximum speed of 226 km/h.
Important and interesting: the significantly larger engine has exactly the same weight as its predecessor. And although the Japanese were able to improve the torsional stiffness of the GR86/BRZ by an impressive 50 per cent, the vehicle is 10 kilos lighter overall. With a kerb weight of 1264 kilograms, the Japanese vehicle, which is compact on the outside and not really oversized on the inside, is convincing in this area anyway.
The Toyota GT86 was already a source of joy with its agility, handling and analogue feel, but now everything is even better with the GR86. On the Spanish and Danish country roads over which we were allowed to drive it, it convinces with lightning-fast response (naturally aspirated!), crisp gearstick, excellent handling (new front axle), and still plenty of residual comfort. Still insufficient for such a vehicle: the sound. But the after-market must still have something to sell. On the racetrack, however, we were not quite so convinced: if you are really hard on the brakes, it becomes very light at the rear. And the rear end has a tendency to want to go its own way quite early on. That’s not a problem, and it’s easy to recover, but you won’t get any faster that way. For our taste, the whole vehicle is a bit nervous.
This is the decisive, actually big difference to the Subaru BRZ. The Subaru BRZ is much more “Gran Turismo”, is more comfortably tuned, and is by far not as “sharp” as the Toyota. On a handling course, we were able to drive the two vehicles directly one after the other – and while the Toyota is quite poisonous, wants to break out at the rear at every quick change of direction, can be brought into a drift with a twitch in the right eyebrow, the Subaru remains calm itself. We didn’t want to measure who was faster in the end: both are fun. Even though we are quite amazed at how much influence small corrections in the suspension set-up can have on two vehicles that are actually one.
The Subaru BRZ also has a more refined interior; we don’t know the base price yet. The sporty(er) Toyota GR86 is available from 33’900 Euros/37’900 Swiss Francs – and thus remains a special offer among sports cars. But now the customer is really spoilt for choice between these two vehicles, which have a pleasingly different character after all. However, they will probably remain exotic on our roads, as there seem to be too few connoisseurs who enjoy a sports car that has been designed according to all the rules of the art and yet is still reasonable – the two Japanese cars only compete directly with each other.
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