The Toyota GT86 and Subaru BRZ have been very popular since its release in 2012. With it’s near perfect balance and tight cornering ability made up for its less than stellar power output, but a slew of aftermarket support has allowed the GT86/BRZ to be an excellent platform for performance builds. Now, both Toyota and Subaru have revealed that a refresh is coming, based on the Toyota TNGA platform but with a Subaru powerplant.
This refresh will improve on both the GT86 and BRZ with a number of “substantial changes”, the most important being the possible move to a turbocharged 2.4-litre Boxer engine from Subaru. The cars’ balance, handling, and power will each be improved on, with the horsepower looking to increase from 200hp to about 255hp, plus a bump in torque too, thanks to a turbo. With the current cars producing 156lb-ft of torque and reaching 60mph in 7.6 seconds (manual variant), these improvements could see the sports car hitting mid 6s.
The Toyota variant will come with a name change from ‘GT86’ to ‘GR86’ inline with Toyota’s new Gazoo Racing branding which is already being used by the Supra and new GR Yaris.
The updates to the Toyota GT86/BRZ start to bring these cars eerily closer in comparison to the Porsche 944 Turbo, where the currents offerings are very similar to the Porsche 944 NA.
Check out this comparison chart which compares the specs of the naturally aspirated version of the FRS (same as GT86 and BRZ) as seen in the bottom right corner of the chart, compared to the Porsche 944 S2 and Turbo along the top of the chart.
A more in depth comparison of the top 10 best sports cars under 10K can be found here.
