- Alright so real quick though before we get started,
I want you guys to know that this was
gonna take place in front of an FR-S,
but unfortunately Gels apparently
just didn't wanna bring his FR-S,
and when we asked him why not,
he said that he accidentally switched
his keys out with another videographer,
so here are the keys he missed out on,
and here are his keys.
Now, this seems like it's easy to mess up,
but if you just would've turned and looked,
look what you would have found.
Knowledge.
B is for boxer who got really popular,
Rear is for four wheel drive.
Z is for Zenith and, I'm running out of words to
match this song to the one in the show.
(television no signal sound)
What's going on you beautiful people?
It's Alex from Fitment Industries,
Alex, F.I and the socials.
And today we're talking about another episode of
So You Want,
we're with the FR-S,
the BRZ, and the GT,
and if you like numbers, 86.
And, actually that's it, that's all the letters
I got for you today.
Boom! Let's get into it!
(car engine raging) (exciting music playing)
Don't forget to subscribe, and now that you're all amped up
on FR-S's doing burn-outs and cool stuff in the
beginning of the video, because I always get
amped up when I watch the editor's do the
things with the videos too.
So, and hit the bell thing.
The Toyota 86 is a sports car that was jointly
developed by Toyota and Subaru.
In 2012 to now, a manufacturer to the
Subaru Gunma facility plant.
Are you ready for the crash course?
Good.
Meant to capture an entry-level performance,
automotive enthusiasts: the BRZ, FR-S, 86,
was essentially to create a now current AE86,
which was built off the same mentality.
Now, for the Toyota variant,
it's marketed as the 86, or GT 86.
Now besides the fact that this initial partnership came out
of pretty much nowhere, it actually made some pretty decent
sense at the time to a bunch of executives that
sit way at the top of most of these big buildings in
New York and stuff like that.
If you take it back to the good old recession days of 2008,
Toyota bought sixteen-in-a-half percent of
the Fuji heavy industrial,
which owns and is the parent company of Subaru.
So you would think that when Toyota came to
Subaru with the idea for the concept,
they'd be like, "yeah, I suppose we could help."
No, no, get that real drive, weird looking ***,
Toyota hugging face looking thing outta here!
It was trash, they didn't want
anything to do with it, at all.
Plus it was 2008, so in terms of actually having a lot of
liquidable funds for stuff,
it wasn't really going well for a lot of people.
It was rejected, it took a working prototype and
a lot of convincing, and for the fact of the matter that
they took all of the tread off of tires because they
were doing so much crazy stuff with the protoype,
that it finally got around to maybe it was a good idea.
And they were eventually in like, Flynn,
from prototype to production,
the automotive powerhouses that be,
had plenty of struggles that most enthusiasts were not
too aware of with this joint partnerships of things.
It was like watching divorced parents have to get along for
like a sixth grade soccer class.
Like, they just had to do it, and they were gonna do it
because they cared about little Jimmy.
They wanted him to succeed.
Those struggles included having to
work with another company.
Who knew that would be difficult?
Subaru's engine ended up adopting a fuel injection from
Toyota because of its increase capabilities which
Subaru actually just didn't want.
Toyota ended up having to show the trade secret of
their fuel injection system which Toyota didn't really want.
A cheap engineer from the LFA production had to step in and
assist in getting the vehicle to the
necessary performance numbers because what they
currently had for engineers and for planning just
really wasn't really cutting the cake.
They ended up having to change the
fuel injection information, the bore stroke, and
a few other items until they finally hit that
horse-powered target and goal that they
so desperately needed to have the car be capable of
hitting the market they wanted to.
But it's just like having a good batch of brownies,
it doesn't matter if the entire kitchen is destroyed and
it takes two hours to clean up.
Because once you actually just take the first bite of like,
those medium warm brownies out of the
oven after they cooled, it's totally worth it.
The FR-S is like just a really good, like boxed brownie.
From there, the GT 86 train hit, and it hit hard.
It was a massive success by many, and the automotive
enthusiasts took the car and just ran with it.
It was golden.
At least, except for the 2013 model
which had some valve spring issues.
But once those got sorted out, then they ran with it.
They were good for about a thousand miles and
then the motor blew up for some reason.
But other than that, and other than that year, smooth.
Smooth sailing baby.
In the automotive realm, the BRZ FR-S hit the market
damn near perfectly.
It was fast, it was nimble, and at the perfect price point
that actually allowed people to pick them up and
have a little leftover for wheels, tires, and
suspension at your boy's place at Fitment Industries.
Ayo!
It didn't have forced induction or
an overly complex interior.
It was an extremely strong platform that made plenty of
people jump from their standard Miata 350z or
S 2000 counterpart to try something different,
to try something new.
And it didn't take long for all of these cars to get the
good old treatment from the world that we all know and love,
us, the people that change things around from OEM,
and we think it makes it better but then it doesn't.
That's us, that's your boys.
So what can you expect if you
were to pick up an FR-S or a BRZ?
Oof!
Let me tell you, bud.
You'll see GrimmSpeed parts everywhere,
RPF1's lurking around every corner,
Tomei unequal length headers
awaiting your credit card information,
tank coilovers, and some
Michelin's awaiting the next happy turn.
And these vehicles have an almost unusually high amount of
modifications available to them.
Which is why the platform is just so, just so damn awesome.
See, you've got brands like HKS, Crawford, SubiSpeed,
Stop Tech, FactionFab, Cobb, Charvonia, OLM, TRD
(quick sigh for breath)
Ecutek, Perrin, and just about every other
possible brand out there.
If you think they make parts for the FR-S or BRZ,
spoiler alert: they do.
If you think you can build it,
I promise someone's already done it.
Made a part for it, turned it into an LLC, and then
put it on a site somewhere that if you type it in
online followed by part name,
you're gonna, it's gonna be there.
Now, the actual driving experience of an
FR-S BRZ straight out of the box, no modifications,
are pretty good, as long as you're not looking for
some sort of crazy horse-powered car,
something's gonna be braggable.
And when I say braggable, I mean you want to
be able to have a conversation, that usually goes like,
"hey bro, you see me roll up next to that 335,"
and like the other friend's like, "Yeah man!"
And then you're like,
"Yeah man, I race 'em and I gapped 'em, buses, buses dude."
That conversation is never gonna happen if you own an
FRS or BRZ with no modifications.
Just not.
You could say maybe like a Miata,
like that would be a comparable battle.
But, you don't buy an FR-S or BRZ just to stay stock.
But you can keep them stocked if that's what you enjoy.
Modification's certainly help no doubt,
but that's not the point of this car.
It's a drivers car, like a Miata.
And that's why people love these platforms just
as much as a lot of Miata people do.
There are only a few cars that come out in recent years that
gives the younger car guy or gal a vehicle that
isn't an arm and a leg, a chance at smiling in the
high rev section of a pretty outstanding sounding engine.
So what are the pro's and con's?
I'm glad you asked, me, me.
Because the pro's are that it's a
great platform for almost any enthusiast.
You'll be able to do anything
you can think of to these cars.
Forced induction, wide body, slamming, track set-up,
minimal mods, moderate mods, or just
turning it into a miniature jet car.
It's pretty much all possible.
The Subaru and Toyota combination means
you generally have a pretty good
set-up for reliability to boot.
But, I mean there's some things that
can make the whole thing blow up.
Reliability, once forced induction comes into play,
can get a bit weary.
Especially if you're not entirely sure what you're doing.
But the basics after the recalls and all that good stuff,
and you should find yourself ready for one of the
Saturday's to cruise with the boys.
Well, there are a few con's as well
if you're just about to jump into one.
They are awfully popular, and for that particular reason,
it's very difficult to have anything one off.
If you think that you want to do something to
be unique and stand out, most likely it's already been done.
And if you're doing it for attention,
it's also going to be fairly difficult to do.
Anything you think you want to do to the car has been done.
And not that it's a bad thing, there are some killer
BRZ's and FR-S's out there, like the Three Cities one,
and I know Connor has one that's absolutely outstanding that
we have reviewed from the gallery.
And they're unique in their own way,
but you're gonna start to see consistencies across the
car culture across that platform
because it is just so popular.
It's made it more difficult to stand out.
The only other gripe would be that people sometimes
buy them for the wrong reasons, sell them, and
then complain about the platforms' performance.
Let me just say this again, for the kids in the back.
If you're buying this car to brag about high numbers,
or fast anything, you're going to have a bad time.
We love them, and they're all over
our own aftermarket car gallery,
where it's like, it's a popular thing.
And see all the set-ups that anybody's ever done.
And it's very cool because the FR-S and BRZ provides
something that not a lot of
other brands have been able to do.
Especially in recent years,
considering how much everything seems to cost.
Now, should you get an FR-S or BRZ, is entirely up to you.
They're practically their own Legos,
like we've talked about in the past.
And they're a small sports car coupe that
actually does pretty well with kinda
handling anything that you throw at it.
But, they're not everyone's cup of tea.
So if you're gonna buy one, we recommend
test driving one first.
It seems like there's no middle ground,
with the FR-S, BRZ, GT 86 community.
It's either you love 'em or you hate 'em, and
there's no in between.
But honestly, if you did yourself a wee bit of research,
you'd find out that they're pretty fun.
You just kinda have to get over some of the differences that
make the Subaru Toyota partnership just
a little bit funky that you can see all throughout the car,
and you'd probably be a pretty happy camper.
But, if you guys have a BRZ or an FR-S,
let us know in the comments section below
if you have RPF1's which we probably know that you do,
you can also drop that in the comments section too.
If you have the only type of BRZ FR-S build,
nobody else has it out there, let us know,
drop your ID or something like that,
we'll probably tell you to add it to the gallery so
we can review it from the gallery.
But I'm Alex from Fitment Industries,
do not forget to subscribe and hit the bell button so
we can do more videos like this.
And if you're looking for more technical information,
we have made a second channel for you guys.
That will be in the description link below
if you're more of a fan of the
technical stuff, the garage content, the build stuff,
we'll be doing that stuff as well.
But, I'm Alex from Fitment Industries,
we will see you later.
Peace!