- I got a question for you guys,
and buckle up buttercup 'cause it's a doozy.
Does making a car faster make it better?
(car engine revs)
Ever since these cars debuted in 2012,
fans and haters alike have been asking one thing:
when is it gonna get more power, baby?
(car engine revs)
(tires screech)
Today, we're gonna look at the 86.
We're gonna see how this seemingly conventional sports car
is actually one of the most unique rides
in the last 30 years,
and finally answer the age-old roaming question:
does making a faster car mean making a better car?
Tune up, babies!
This is everything you need to know
to get up to speed on the Toyota 86
slash Subaru BRZ (thunderclap)
slash Scion FR-S. (thunderclap)
Rest in peace, baby, say hi to Tupac for me.
(thunderclaps) (upbeat music)
(air whooshes)
Before we get into it,
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So if you're thinking you might be losing your hair,
guys, hit 'em up.
(beep)
Chapter one:
(thunderclap) why they built it.
So for clarity's sake, let's go ahead
and address the big old fat elephant in the room: names.
Toyota, Subaru
and the late Scion (air whooshes)
all produced versions of this car.
The GT86, the BRZ, and FR-S respectively.
All versions had little small differences betwixt them.
To make things easier,
I'm just gonna refer to it as the 86.
Unless, for some reason, I need to be specific.
Got it?
Great, let's get into it.
Toyota was at their sportiest
between the mid-80s and mid-90s.
While the Corolla GTS went away in '87,
the Celica, the Supra
and the MR2 kept the dream alive for the brand.
They were known as the Toyota Triplets.
Toyota fan or not,
you can't deny that they made some really fun cars.
But by the mid-2000s,
things were a little bit different.
(air whooshes) (car engine revs)
Toyota wasn't known for their simple sports car anymore,
their brand image was now tied to cars
like the RAV4, the Camry, the Prius.
And while these are great cars in their own right,
they're all very important,
they were great for reasons
that weren't very exciting reasons,
like reliability, which, as I get older,
does legitimately become more exciting.
Look, guys.
(gentle chimes)
You're gonna meet people in your life
that at first blow your socks off.
They might be hot, they might wear cool clothes.
But if they flake on your all the time
and you can't be sure if they really wanna hang out,
then they might not be the one for you, and that's okay.
Because you deserve a car that starts every time
like a Camry or a Prius.
That being said, Toyota wanted to be hot.
It was time for Toyota to go back to school in Swerve City.
In 2007, Toyota showed off a concept
they hoped would get them back on the right track.
It was called the FT-HS concept.
It was a front engine, rear-wheel drive car
powered by a hybrid V6 powertrain.
And it kinda looks like the GT86 that we know today.
But honestly, not really. (chuckles)
The bones were there though.
And then in 2008, Toyota bought a $311 million stake
in Fuji Heavy Industries.
Fuji was the parent company
of one of Toyota's competitors: Subaru.
They were now friends with Subaru,
and friends work together.
Now, at first, it was reported that Subaru and Toyota
were gonna develop an SUV.
But remember, Toyota wanted to be hot
and SUVs are not hot.
Subaru pitched a bunch of collab ideas to Toyota
and one of them was a sports car,
and Toyota agreed, with one stipulation:
it had to be rear-wheel drive.
The man Toyota chose to lead the project
was a 20-year veteran of the company named Tetsuya Tada.
He had dreamed of building a sports car
since he first arrived at Toyota
but had since spent his time as a chassis engineer
on a lot of their less hot products.
But when Tetsuya's boss, Toyota VP Akio Toyoda
called him into his office,
Mr Toyoda laid out his vision.
"Tetsuya, I want you to give me a sports car.
"One with no limits.
"You can do whatever you want."
And the first thing he did was call up his friend
and chassis engineer, Yoshinori Sasaki.
"Dude, you are never gonna believe
"what the boss wants me to do, man!"
"Scratch his back?"
"What?"
"Mow his lawn?"
"Dude, no!
"He wants me to design a frickin' sports car, dude!"
"What?"
"And I want you to--"
"Give you a kiss?"
"No, dude, I want you to help me."
"Really?
"Aww, thanks, man, that means so much to me."
This was his chance to make that dream come to fruition.
One of the members on Tetsuya and Yoshi's team
was a younger dude,
who apparently had owned at least five AE86s.
Knowing these things, it should be no surprise at all
that the sports car that they would design
would be small, light,
and as simple as possible.
For a second,
it looked like the project wouldn't even happen at all.
When Tetsuya pitched an AE86 successor
to the big bosses up in Toyota Land,
they asked him, and I quote,
"How does it measure up to the competition?
"Is it faster?
"Is it more powerful?
"What can we use to sell it?"
And Tetsuya just said,
literally, this is what he said, this is a quote:
(crickets chirp) nothing.
Nothing!
The dude was gonna build a car whose only selling point
was that it was fun to drive.
This team didn't even have
any concrete goals for the project.
Usually when manufacturers make a car,
they set lap time or acceleration benchmarks
but no, they didn't even do that.
The new car would just be really good.
And as a result, Toyota sat on the project for six months
but after some of the bosses drove a prototype
that the team had built,
apparently, it blew their frickin' minds off
and they allowed the project to continue.
That's bold.
Chapter two:
how they built it. (thunderclap)
The team looked through
Toyota's family tree for inspiration.
Even though the mid-engine layout of the old MR2
was the most sports car of Toyota's lineage.
Because most super cars are mid-engine, they just are.
The team preferred a simpler layout,
a front engine, rear-wheel drive.
In the end though, it was Toyota's second ever sportster,
the Sports 800 that would lay the groundwork
for this new car.
The sports had a teeny little boxer engine on it though.
Since boxers are pretty much flat,
they can be put really low in a car,
which dramatically lowers the center of gravity.
Which, therefore, improve handling.
(car engine revs)
(tires screech)
Tetsuya and Yoshi really liked that.
"So yeah, check, we definitely want a boxer for the car."
There was just one little problem though.
Toyota didn't make one.
Fortunately though,
that was their new friend Subaru's specialty.
Subaru had been playing with boxer engines since 1966
and at this point, it was the only kind of engine
that they used in any of their cars.
Boxers operate like conventional engines
but they're sideways.
The pistons travel perpendicular to the ground
instead of vertically or diagonally.
They're very balanced and very smooth.
Subaru would handle the engine development for the project,
adapting their existing FA22 liter engine
with Toyota's D4S fuel injection system.
The collaboration between the two new friends,
Subaru and Toyota, resulted in the FA20D engine.
Now, unlike a lot of Subaru's other engines,
it's not turbo-charged, which we'll discuss later,
and as a result,
it made a completely adequate 197 horsepower
and 151 foot pounds of torque.
Numbers aside, this engine made the car super unique.
How many other front engine,
rear drive coops can you think of
with a boxer engine under the hood?
This thing is a total oddball
and honestly, it still trips me out
that this is what they decided to go with.
Toyota unveiled the team's work
at the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show.
And let me remind you kids watching this,
it was a big frickin' deal.
Finally, Toyota was back in the affordable sports car game,
with one of the coolest partners ever helping them out!
Imagine if Subaru helped you with a group project at school,
that would be frickin' awesome!
Subaru and Toyota
would both the sell the car under different names.
Subaru called it the BRZ
and Toyota called it the 86
and Scion called it the FRS.
Wait a second, what the heck is Scion?
Like the frickin' home world in The Matrix?
No, that's Zion.
I said Scion.
Well, I wish that you would put that other guy on.
Who, Nolan, host of Wheelhouse on Mondays?
No.
Oh, you mean Jeremiah,
host of Bumper to Bumper on Tuesdays?
No.
Oh, Zach Jobe, host of Money Pit on Wednesdays?
No.
Well, I do Thursdays.
What about my other show, D List, on Fridays?
The other one.
Oh, you mean Joey, host of Versus on Saturdays?
Oh, no, I meant Nolan.
He's way better than you.
So, for the kids watching
or the friends over here,
Scion was Toyota's youth-oriented brand here in America.
There was a small problem though.
Most people who bought Scions were old.
The XB was very easy to get in and out of,
and I don't blame 'em.
The best course of action in the US
was to introduce the 86 as a Scion.
- I love this car!
- [James] And get those youthful buyers
to revive the aging Scion brand.
The cars finally went on sale to the public in 2012
for the 2013 model year.
It was go time.
(car engine revs) (tires screech)
Did Toyota and Subaru succeed?
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(beep)
Short answer?
Yes!
People frickin' loved the Toyobaru twins.
Both cars were huge sales successes in the US,
selling almost 27,000 units
between the two versions in 2013.
The MacPherson strut front
and multi-link read was great around town
but also very composed on the twisties.
The skinny, literally pre-aspect tires
made it easy for anyone
to slide their rear end dow with ease
but because the motor
was pushing out barely 200 horsepower,
the car was also very forgiving
The big man himself, Akio Toyoda,
said the car "responds to good driving skills."
Which is a bad (beep) thing for a boss to say about a car.
Almost overnight, the 86 entered the pantheon of cars
that can teach you to be a good driver,
and the car was just as at home commuting to school
as it was in the canyons
or at the racetrack.
Now, the differences between the Subaru
and the Toyota versions didn't just end at the badge.
The Toyota has a mad face,
while the Suby, turn that little frown upside down.
The suspension tuning was also slightly different
between the two cars,
with the BRZ favoring stability
(car engine revs)
and the FRS being more agile.
(car engine revs) (tires screech)
It was official, baby.
Toyota was back, baby!
With a ton of help from Subaru.
Chapter three:
the evolution. (thunderclap)
Right out of the gate,
Subaru let their in-house performance division, STI,
tweak the BRZ for even better performance.
What they came up with was the BRZ-TS,
outfitted with Remo brakes,
stickier Michelin tires, STI suspension,
a stronger, large diameter drive shaft,
and some other small changes.
STI produced only 500 of these things
in 2013 for Japan only.
It would be a while before America got anything like it.
The US did get some special edition Toyobarus
early on though, like the FRS release special in 2015.
This thing only came in yellow
and included upgrades like a very boost creepy body kit
with quad-tip exhausts
as well as some TRD lowering springs.
But for the most part, everything underneath was the same
and people often criticized the special edition.
So the car really didn't see any huge changes
until 2016 when Toyota sent Scion to the farm,
together with all my childhood pets,
and started selling the FRS as a Toyota
and formally changed the name to the 86.
Both the 86 and the BRZ had styling refreshers.
The BRZ still had a smiley face
and the 86 now looked like an angry fish.
And it was around this time
that public opinion around the twins started to shift.
The car was a game-changer back in 2012,
recapturing the nostalgia for simple
and agile, compact cars of yesteryear.
But after five years of production,
the novelty had kinda worn off
and people started seeing the 86 in a different light.
And that light was slow.
(car engine revs) (tires screeches)
It's true, the 86 is not the fastest car out there,
the FA-20, with the fancy fuel injection,
pushes the car to 60 in 6.3 seconds.
Now this car is one of the few newer cars
that Nolan's Mustang could beat in a drag race.
And for a couple of years now,
people have been begging Subaru
to throw a turbo on the BRZ,
and it makes sense.
I mean, the 2015 WRX had a turbo-charged FA20,
which puts out 260 horsepower,
the BRZ weighs 500 pounds less than the WRX!
It would frickin' fly with that motor in it!
But it hasn't happened yet!
Why not?
In an interview with CarAdvice.com,
Tetsuya Tada said that turbo-charging the car
would require a whole new platform.
He says that the car's weight distribution
is balanced just so
and that any extra weight under the hood, like a turbo,
would upset the feel of the entire car.
If you ask me, I would've done it anyway!
(car engine revs)
And I've designed a car, it's called the Pumphrey 502,
so I think I know a thing or two
about designing a cool car.
Lack of boost notwithstanding,
we in the States got a hopped up Toyobaru
when Subaru finally brought over the BRZ-TS,
an exclusive one-year run,
which they brought back for the 2020 model year,
minus the huge wing.
And it was only available in one color, ceramic white.
The 2020 TS is the factory Toyobaru zenith,
the pinnacle of what this platform is capable of
off the showroom floor.
So what's next?
Chapter four:
the future. (thunderclap)
The rumor mills have been a churning, folks.
According to Autocar
and an Instagram post from All Car News,
the next-gen 86 was confirmed in a sales deck
presented to Toyota dealers back in March.
Autocar says the new car will be called the GR86,
have an entirely new platform
and most likely make it's power
from Subaru's 2.4 liter boxer engine,
complete with a turbo! (thunderclap)
Hallelujah!
Lordy, Lordy, thank you, thank you!
Oh, my boys!
Obviously, this is just
really great detective work on my part
and it hasn't been confirmed by Toyota themselves.
But we should be hearing news soon,
since the sales deck in question
says that the car will be on sale next summer.
Toyota, call me, I'll break the news for you,
I love leaking stuff.
Everybody, tweet @Toyota
and tell them to let Donut debut this new car.
Hit us up, info@donut.media.
Let's talk.
The 86 has proven once again
that you don't need a ton of power to have a ton of fun.
But, that being said,
just a little bit more power would be nice.
Just a little.
Thank you, guys, so much for watching this video.
This is my job, I can't believe it,
I just sit in my garage
and I yell about cars
and I've got two of my friends skyping in.
What are we on, Google Hangouts?
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