► New Toyota GR86 sports car is here
► Priced under £30k – but now sold out!
► Takes over where the GT86 left off
The new £30k Toyota GR86 coupe has sold out in the UK within minutes of going on sale. The entire two-year allocation was snapped up within just 90 minutes of going on sale on Wednesday 20 April 2022.
It reflects the renewed interest in Toyota’s hot GR division – and the bargain pricing Toyota has given the sports car. The GR86 was offered in just one trim level and priced at £29,995 – which included 18-inch alloy wheels, an eight-inch touchscreen, seven-inch cockpit dials and other tech such as a reversing camera. If you want to go automatic, you’ll need to pay a further £2090 at £32,085, but we’d argue that’s not the best way to experience Toyota’s junior sports car.
And while the sub-£30,000 price grabs the headlines, a look at PCP makes the new ’86 look even more accessible: Toyota says early customers can put down £4777 towards the three-pedal car and pay £299 a month on a 42-month contract. No wonder it sold out so quickly… The only way of buying a new UK-spec GR86 now is to join the waiting list for cancellations.
We’ve now driven the newcomer: read our Toyota GR86 review here
Toyota GR86: what you need to know
The new 2022 Toyota GR86 coupe replaces the GT86 that rekindled Toyota’s interest in sports cars back in 2012. That car was backed by company president Akio Toyoda, who has pushed the Gazoo Racing sports car division up the agenda at the hitherto conservative Japanese car maker, paving the way for the new GR Supra and Yaris.
The new GR86 badge falls in line with the latest corporate branding and follows the well-proven technical formula for sports cars: it’s rear-wheel drive, sticks with a Subaru-sourced naturally aspirated boxer engine configuration (now swollen to 2.4 litres and revving to 7400rpm) and prefers a less-is-more approach to equipment and kerbweight. That’s fine by us…
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A lightweight sports car? How heavy is the Toyota GR86?
It weighs in at an impressively lithe 1275kg (a regular 718 Cayman weighs 1335 kilos these days, remember), and Toyota promises much of that weight is carried low down, for a ground-hugging centre of gravity. That horizontally opposed four-cylinder engine helps here and aluminium is used extensively in the bodywork and roof section.
The GR86’s dimensions closely shadow those of the GT86, at 4265mm long, 1775mm wide and 1310mm tall. Toyota claims a 50% boost in stiffness, giving the chassis a high resistance to twist and boding well for suspension dynamics.
It all sounds like the back-to-basics DNA that so charmed us on the original GT86 is alive and kicking. Even the wheels are modest 18-inch rims, requiring delightfully small 215-section tyres. Less is definitely more here.
Other key Toyota GR86 specs include:
- Engine: 2387cc four-cylinder, DOHC, Toyota D-4S direct injection
- Power/torque: 230bhp/184lb ft
- 0-62mph time: 6.3sec (1.1sec faster than the GT86)
- Top speed: 140mph
- Suspension: MacPherson struts (front), double wishbones (rear)
- Brakes: Ventilated discs front and rear
- Tyres: 215/40 R18
This is still a modestly sized coupe, at a whisker under 4.3m long and 1.8m wide.
Few surprises inside the cabin: this is a focused, simple, very Japanese interior: it won’t win any prizes for creativity and the plastics are still on the sturdy side of plush – but you somehow just know it’ll put function over form, even without having experienced it first-hand.
Our road tester James Taylor noted: ‘It’s still full of hard plastics but it’s less dated looking than the GT86, and the bits your hands and elbows touch are padded, softened and upped in quality. There’s a touchscreen mid-dash which is small-ish but legible, and doesn’t dominate your view.’
Read our full Toyota GR86 review here
How successful was the Toyota GT86?
The coupe segment has been shrinking globally, but Toyota spotted the potential for brand-building and excitement generation with the GT86. It sold more than 200,000 models worldwide in the nine years it was on sale, around 7500 of those in the UK.
The new GR86 is again twinned with the latest Subaru BRZ (above), but this time the Scooby won’t be offered in Europe. The economies of scale are what enable a relatively modest-selling sports car to make it to production – and will also mean that the Toyota benefits from tech such as Subaru’s Eyesight safety systems and a choice of manual or automatic transmissions.
Here’s hoping the GR86 lives up to boss Toyoda’s mantra for its predecessor: ‘If it’s not fun to drive, it’s not a car.’ Amen to that.
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