Toyotas GR86 review: you’ll want to wring its neck
Toyota’s GR86 is heaps of fun, reasonably priced -— and has clever technology that’ll help you out on the race track.
Today I would like to compose a love poem to the wonder of the unnatural world that is traction control. Sure, this clever tech (sometimes more sexily known as ESC, or Electronic Stability Program) has saved untold numbers of lives, and billions of injuries, by preventing people from having the kinds of stupidity-related accidents that were once common – but more importantly, it has made me look, and feel, good.
Modern stability systems can tell when your vehicle is attempting to put more power down than the tyres can cope with, and will prevent disaster by either choking the engine or dabbing the brakes; similarly, using clever yaw sensors, they can sense when your rear end is going sideways and tuck it back into line. For reasons largely related to hubris and testosterone, many sports cars have a button that will turn these systems off; only foolish people – who can easily be spotted by the fact that they own helmets with their names on them, and special driving shoes – tend to do so.
With the traction control left on in a car like the simply joyous new Toyota GR86 you can attack a race track with self-assured abandon, because you know the software will save you; the GR86 has a “Race” setting, too, which allows the car to slide even more luridly sideways before the electronic nanny steps in.
Driving this Goldilocks sports car (Toyota describes its power outputs as “not too much, not too little, but just right”) around the Phillip Island Circuit, I was enjoying this ability mightily, planting my foot out of the slower corners to send this pert plaything sideways while making suitably Top Gear-style drifting faces (these look a bit like you’re having an orgasm, only less pained).
First launched a decade ago, the 86 was a revelation, the first fun car Toyota had made in aeons, a rear-wheel-drive, naturally aspirated, lightweight toy that set the market alight with a tempting $29,990 price tag. I wanted one, as did any sensible person.
Now it’s back, in GR (Gazoo Racing) form, which means more grunt – the engine has grown from 2.0 litres to 2.4, raising power by 18 per cent (to 174kW) and torque by 22 per cent (to 250Nm) – and a 1.3-second faster sprint to 100km/h, at 6.3 seconds.
The important thing to note is that it’s not turbocharged, and thus not that fast, particularly when driven around a circuit built for proper racing cars – flat out down the very long straight I got to 210km/h, just short of its 226km/h max, a speed I think it might only manage if fired out of a cannon – yet somehow it’s fantastically fun.
There’s just something so pure and puppy-like about the 86, and this new one is better than ever – sharper and even more tail-happy. On the track it emboldens you to wring its neck, and get the absolute most it can deliver – as opposed to many of those more expensive cars that feel like they’re extracting every bit of bravery and ability you can muster, and often still leaving you feeling beaten.
What helps to make the Toyota so involving, of course, is its lovely six-speed manual gearbox, and the way its pedals are set up for frantic heel-and-toe changes. Some experts complain that it doesn’t feature rev-matching technology, but I love its absence, which just adds to the aura of old-school purity. (There is an automatic option, and I did try it, but it was awful and should not exist.)
Unfortunately I made the error of going for a hot lap with an actual racing driver at the wheel, and then – feeling that I had somehow extracted his skills, like a helmeted vampire – I went out and had another go myself.
My first lap was a drifting dreamscape and I declared myself a genius, but on the next time around I over-rotated, failed to catch it and speared off onto the grass. It turned out that the properly talented racing driver had turned the traction completely off and no one had put it back on for the amateur.
While I was initially baffled and then just embarrassed, what I can’t stop thinking about is that first lap, where I somehow got it right, without the electronic aids, just because I thought they were there.
To wit, my love poem: “Oh, traction control, you do make me grin; but alas when you left me, I was all in a spin.”
I’m happy to report that the GR86 is also great when not going sideways, and being driven at sane speeds on public roads. It is noisy and the ride is firm, but you’d absolutely put up with that just to feel so gloriously connected to a machine that’s designed purely to be entertaining.
The only unfortunate news is that the price has risen, quite a lot, to $43,240. At the launch of the GR86 Toyota folk spoke like politicians about inflation, supply and demand and improved infrastructure, but – much like our glorious leaders – there seemed to be a subtext: “We’re going to sell so many of these, we can pretty much charge what we like.”
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Toyota GR86