2022 Toyota GR86 | First Drive and Details

i never thought this day would come like many i'm at monticello raceway discussing the brand new gr86 it is shared with the brz it's the same broken record as the last generation this has been updated and changed and changed so you're going to want to know what's been done and how that translates into a driver's car experience so let's get started [Music] [Music] so [Music] you saw a bit of the exterior and what they've done is refined the outside of this car and of course the 86 and the brz are different but it looks like toyota listened to some of the aftermarket and some of the owners of the previous car so they've made it more aggressive the rocker panels the little arrow pieces and the rear fenders the duck bill integrated spoiler on the trunk these are nice touches and it's a welcome addition but this is more of an evolution than a complete changeover and it's much of the same story on the interior space the door panels the dashboard the interior layout is almost identical in many ways and it's a very purposeful interior something that the original 86 had in mind the toyota and subaru engineers wanted something that was mostly a pure driver's car so low glare materials on the dashboard on the upper parts of the door you didn't want a ton of reflective surfaces gimmicks in here so there's no piano black there's no fancy pants alloys the only thing you see is alcantara on the seats with the premium trim level and a little bit of leathers where you need it like on the steering wheel or the shift knob if you opt for the manual now the hvac controls and those buttons look a bit more modern less generic and then you get to the subaru stuff like in the automatic you get the eyesight module which of course toyota doesn't use the branding for that but it's a lot of the subaru technology has been added back here added to this car for those who want it for safety systems the manual at least in this case does not have that now the things that are retained that are ultra important what is this that's a parking brake a manual one there's no digital switch it just you pull it and you go it's amazing and there's little things like that if you would ask me five years ago i'm like yeah this is kind of cheap i wish they'd tart it up now please don't touch it leave it simple it's amazing it's affordable and you still have a manual transmission and we're going to talk about the changes to some of the mechanical things in terms of engine and trans when we drive it on the track and a little bit of the older generation car on the track as well no paddles yeah they didn't add them what was it the right no it's not even right this is gonna suck so mark [Music] original 86 oh an automatic check because we got to represent those who want that pure experience and we don't have paddles in this car for some reason so i got to use the whoa oh i get up shift i don't the auto's reversed oh jeez oh man this is this is a driver's car i'm just gonna leave it in third and we're gonna talk to the previous generation car jack what do you think so it's nice revisiting this car it's still a great car to drive on the track it's super rewarding but it's deficiencies as time is moved on or more apparent it doesn't trail break it does not rotate under braking though you can drift this thing to your heart's content with throttle if you manage to unsettle it enough uh it rides pretty well it's still a very usable car it's not that quiet but again in this price category or you know around thirty thousand dollars it's probably the most driver-centric car that you could also daily and it's got a sound tube yeah it doesn't have fake engine noise which is a huge perk what do you think this engine gotta walk me through it uh it's a dog i mean honestly it's just it's so underpowered and you know you would think a naturally aspirated car would have this great engine and it just doesn't i think that's always been the deficiency of this car i mean everything else is great about it i mean you can just fling this thing around like an animal go flat out it's a total momentum guy i don't know how do you just shift for me dude because i don't know how to drive an automatic apparently and the benefit is you can have a friend drive this for you while i focus on the steering oh i got myself out of that one oh yeah dude handle the shifting now this is gonna be a new trend my my uh tik tok account dude is gonna blow up after this yeah okay so what else is there to talk about jack well with the last car particularly the trd variant mark it was a shift for you the last you're the wrong gear oh man oh no yeah yeah as we learned before with this car the trd that was like the closeout car tons of grip completely opposite from where it started and it was so buttoned down and getting back in this you know it's a reminder of how many things were left off the table to make this a great car and yeah i mean the last car right you had brombos you had real tires you had all the performance goodies you had lowering springs you had sway bars all from the factory and it was just a package you could just go out and buy the new car doesn't touch you well the new car doesn't have that yet so if you want all the performance goodies from the factory day one you don't want to worry about reliability there's still a market for the old car but as we're about to find out the new car is a lot to offer yeah i think we've said everything we need to say about this car let's i can't wait to drive the new one where one of us drives the gearbox hopefully where it's not a two-man operation now before we head out on track there are a few technicalities i'd like to cover i'm sitting in the gr supra and when this was released it was greeted with far less enthusiasm because you took an iconic japanese nameplate in the supra and put it on a customer car that was mostly designed by bmw now the gr86 and the gt86 did not have this problem because for one you had two japanese companies working together and then there's the price point like the new gr86 will start at about thirty thousand dollars and you get a manual transmission out of the box this car has already been proven people love it and in some cases they don't like it but they've attempted to fix a multitude of issues that they had with the first generation car so let's go over that so let's start with the engine since that's one of the biggest complaints about the old car since they've increased the displacement by 0.4 liters it's given them an additional 28 pounds feet of torque at a lower rpm with the additional horsepower increase as well it is going to transform the driving experience the next thing they've done is improved the automatic transmission by updating the torque converter and the clutches the manual transmission also received some updates they've improved fourth fourth gear shift feel they've changed the viscosity of the gear oil which is something i did on the older car to smooth out some of the clunkiness of it and then of course improve the gearbox or strengthen the gearbox for the additional power that the car delivers which will probably also help people that are modifying the car in the future now the weight has gone up in this car about 50 pounds with the manual transmission version and also the fuel economy has dropped as well but they have lowered the center of gravity about 1.5 millimeters which is not something you can change in the aftermarket they've tried to reduce weight as much as possible you have an aluminum hood you've aluminum fenders and roof and they've strengthened a whole series of the underbody components like the rear subframe is strengthened and there are multiple areas that are changed in terms of suspension now you have different a little bit different kinematics in the front and the rear and the shock absorber technology has changed a bit there is now an assist spring inside the shock absorber which helps with rebound and ride quality now overall we haven't found every single piece of technical information unfortunately because of covid we did not have access to the japanese engineers on the toyota or the subaru side so there's going to be more things that we're going to learn as time goes on one of the last things to talk about which is critically important to this car is weight balance i know one of the arguments is going to be well cars have gotten faster you have vehicles like the civic type r the golf r or the veloster n which might even be faster around a track but one of the things when you set up a front wheel drive architecture is you can't get that perfect 50 50 weight distribution and sometimes the cross balance isn't the greatest on those cars either what you're going to get is you're always going to get that understeer nature at the limit unless you really dial it out with suspension with this car right from the factory you have that 50 50 split and that near 50 50 cross balance when you're driving it what you get is this natural rotation from the car and with the 86 it feels a lot like those old bmws where you can just get it into that real natural slide and control it you have this huge window of control and that's what makes this car special the drive that some of the faster front wheel drive variants can't do so if you prefer that kind of driver centric feeling that driver focused feeling where you can work with the car's limits and learn from it that's why the 86 is special much like the nd2 miata and of course the s2000s now last thing to talk about really is there is a ton of carryover stuff here you see it under the hood it looks like the front suspension or at least the shock towers are almost identical so suspension should be easily swappable and the brake size between the front and the rear is also identical from the old car which means if you have a big brake kit it's probably going to fit on here and some of those things may work and of course we haven't measured them and i'm going to wait for the aftermarket to confirm that but i think there's enough new here to make it feel new and enough old to make it feel familiar so let's head out on the track and see how it drives [Music] we are on monticello motorsports park in the new 86 it's a little hot and sweaty hot sweaty and about to rain we did not get a lot of time with this car we were promised it in the future so we're going to give you a brief taste but mark we love engineering so tell me about it what have they done to this car well the long and short of it it's a lot of incremental improvements that subaru has been implementing and most of our new cars are subaru's global architecture which means more high-strength steels more structural adhesives all of that has been added the main changes here however from the previous generation of course are the fa-224 which now has a different boring stroke it's 94.86 it's got a lot more torque it's got more horsepower and you feel it instantly coming from the previous car it's all of that all the changes to board stroke and horsepower which now makes 228 leads this car to do 0-60 in manual for in about six seconds which is noticeably faster than the old car yeah and i think the other thing you notice right away is the fake engine noise and i think everybody in the media has complained about it we've asked why they didn't add an asc defeat and chances are there is going to be a way which will figure out how to either disconnect the module that does it or pull a fuse because it is just god awful yeah it's not a deal breaker because all the inputs are still excellent you have a revised 6-speed manual which is still one of the best in the industry your perfect pedal box and the best steering probably under sixty thousand dollars in the market it loads up nice it's good feel you know dynamically mark it's a hard card argue with well so the azen automatic and the azin manual have been reworked a bit the a's and manual gets a revised fourth gear synchro or fourth gear all together the a's and automatic has vastly different programming and tuning which makes it a little bit quicker to respond and we notice that right away well obviously this is a car that you're gonna best enjoy the manual especially with the way the gearing is and the transmission the automatic in manual mode on the automatic version is not that eager to go down to second gear so you you constantly have to fight it but in the case of this car it still can go sideways there's more torque to go sideways and how is it to control it's one of the easiest cars i've ever driven to drift it's not scary and because it's a torso it's got very easy to control suspension it is a rewarding car to go sideways in as i'm about to attempt here [Music] you just want to park the lc convertible out here for you so you can uh get some v8 and four-cylinder action if you like going sideways and you like a car that's playful a car that makes you drive it's oh my god this is fun to do but if you want to drive it like a driver's car you can because i'm the opposite as soon as this thing does that you can drive it fast as hell this is going to compete with an nd2 miata to nose to nose and once you get a little bit of modification in your tire and probably suspension and brake pads uh it's gonna compete with the s2000 at least the ap one and unlike those cars it's useful every single day you've got a big trunk the rear seats fold down and a closed cabin so you can drive it year round so mark we're pulling back into the pits and is there anything else you want to talk about i mean i think we talked about the interior the exterior a little bit i mean this is really hard i mean to be honest everybody when you have a day with a car like this not even a full day our our real impressions are just loud you're at a nice trip you're on a track trying to jam all this in what i can tell you is from previous being a previous owner and you as well this is a better car in every way without really ruining the core of what they tried to do everything is still as analog as you can get in this modern age and finally you have a motor that isn't a total dog i think that's the biggest takeaway here and it's affordable and it's affordable but let's get into the final thoughts jack and we'll cover some of the other engineering stuff and kind of our overall impressions after we leave this final thoughts on the gr86 and i gotta admit when i heard about this car and all the announcements i'm like they're just basically rehashing the same thing probably based on contract they had to do two generations or whatever but i think after time has passed driving it on track and then thinking about it the more excited i've gotten for it it is a vastly better car while not messing with the formula of the past to me this is a vehicle at thirty thousand dollars with a manual transmission it's just quick enough it's fun to drive every day the fuel economy isn't horrific and it's still that pure driver's car that we know is not going to exist in the future so in some ways i feel like maybe mistakenly they got themselves in too deep having to make this car for too long but on the other hand it really is uh a public service to have a car like this in existence and i i just i personally i know jack's gonna buy one i don't know that i'm gonna jump back into that that camp again but there's absolutely no reason why you wouldn't buy this car if you're in the market for something like a miata or you're looking for an s2000 and they're way too expensive this finally is competitive with those cars and probably has far more overhead in certain ways for at least the street and some track the main difference here is it has good aerodynamics they've improved that even more so with the right suspension with the right brakes you are going to have a ton of fun with this car and it's one that i personally at least at this point not knowing reliability it was it would be something that i would keep for a long period of time you know it is not going to bankrupt you so i look forward to getting this in my hands and spending more time with it of course all these initial first drive videos are going to be people have small windows with them so don't take it as gospel let's see what it's like when we get it out on the street and really drive these things later on thanks for watching i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: savagegeese

Views: 474,815

Keywords: review, cars, cargurus, trucks, 2022, Toyota GR86, Subaru BRZ, Civic type r, new, VW GTI, Golf R, Mazda Miata, Honda S2000, GT86, Acura Integra, manual, Nissan 400z, Hyundai veloster n, dual clutch, Problems, truth, hot hatch, cheap cars cars, tech, manual transmission, pros, cons, Si, ST, track, funny, comparison, best, worst, mods, affordable, mark up, cooling, subaru sti, wrx, Mugen

Id: 6MxQzMxzgEM

Length: 18min 4sec (1084 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 17 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/chippy86]

Unpopular opinion I don't mind fake engine noise.....

I also understand 100% why people don't approve.

[u/Warkid1993]

I got so confused when they started bashing the car in the first driving segment without realizing they were driving the old 86

[u/questionablehobbies]

Can’t wait to test drive one. Will probably trade in my sti for one. Wanna wait for more aftermarket support first

[u/DrSpaceman4]

This is everything I wanted. I'll eventually be trading my '14 BRZ for this. Already have the duckbill spoiler.

[u/xtraburnacct]

The fake engine noise is horrible.

Tbh I’d buy this car if I didn’t already buy a STi lol.

[u/jigsxix]

My first time to see the tachometer and I prefer the manual one of the first gen.

[u/secondarycontrol]

Looks better in those shots than the other promo shots that I've seen.

...and I wish I'd fit in a MX5 RF.

[u/Neraxis]

I'm a tad lukewarm about the mechanical details, less of a revolution. Feels like what the refresh should have been to the first gen, minus the engine and body work. But I do love the new style (sue me, shit looks like a baby ferrari in red from the front) and I'm sure that it'll be a car greater than the sum of its parts much like the first car.

[u/magikmarker7]

It def looks better in video than the promo pics but.....idk man, the tails really aren't doing it for me. I think the sideways quarter note shape of the old gen tails was one of its most distinct features. That being said, not having the god awful looking front plate mount on the bumper is def points for the 86 over the BRZ