- 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, I wanna give a big old
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you these awesome videos. Keeps is a really great partner, long-time friend of the show. 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? (rock music) Announcing the all-new,
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donutmedia.com, go get yours today. (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? Like I said earlier, we have
a new video every single day. We're working hard to keep pumping out entertaining, educational car content for you guys to watch, and we appreciate all of your support, we wouldn't exist with you. If you wanna make it official, let's put a ring on it and go ahead and hit
that subscribe button. It is the best way to keep up with everything that we're putting out.
He sure lays it on thick with the bits, doesn't he?
Ah, the comments in that video are more of the same classic
Barely watchable. He's gotten so worse