TOYOTA GR 86

The GT86 was one of our favourite cars of the 2010s, thanks to its easily accessible rear-driven entertainment. No pressure on its replacement, then…

- MATT SAUNDERS

The Japanese have a particular phrase to describe the feeling of anticipation you get before doing something exciting. That might be performing on stage or jumping out of an aeroplane, but it’s also commonly associated with driving a great sports car. They call it ‘waku doki’: a sort of spine-tingling sense of the fun you’re about to have. Japan, like Britain, clearly remains a sports car-loving island, and the Toyota GT86 was – and remains – a waku doki kind of sports car.

Toyota hopes we will get the same tingle from the GT86’s replacement, which will enter production at jointventure partner Subaru’s plant in Ota, Japan, this year and is set to come to the UK in May 2022.

Will the wider world embrace the GR 86 any more than its predecessor, though, I wonder? The GT86 wasn’t the greatest commercial success, after all. Right now, who can say? But it deserves nothing less. This is an improved operator in lots of ways. Not a hugely different car to drive, but a brilliant one all the same – and one of a more complex, versatile, raw and absorbing character than the original, too.

This time it’s a GR 86 we’re getting and not a GT86 because Gazoo Racing has had a lead hand in the car’s development, just as it did for the GR Yaris and the GR Supra.

Like its predecessor, the car is a lightweight, rear-driven, compact 2+2 coupé with a high-revving, atmospherically aspirated boxer engine and an affordable price tag that’s likely to start with a two when UK prices are announced next month. But there’s an all-new 2.4-litre flat four under the low-rising bonnet, whose cylinder bore has expanded from the perfectly square 86mm dimensions of the old car to 94mm.