Toyota’s hotly-anticipated new GT86 sports coupe has received glowing reviews ahead of going on sale here in the UK in July.
Everything is in place for the car to arrive on Toyota dealer forecourts – but first, we are taking it on a non-stop 1,000-mile continent-crossing dash to bring it to the UK.
The car is be one of the very first Toyota GT86s to arrive on British shores, and to get it here we drove through the night from our European launch event in Barcelona.
Watch the video reviews made by Pistonheads’ Chris Harris, Autocar’s Steve Sutcliffe and Evo magazine’s Henry Catchpole at the GT86 launch.
Our man Nik Pearson started the epic journey on Saturday (26 May) at 1930 EST / 1830 BST.
You can read the full story, here.
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The car looks sporty and agressive, but not “Toyotish”. I mean Audi has it’s unique front bumper, BMW has double ventilation gauges. And this? You can put any sign and You will think that it is it. It might be Nissan, Mitsubishi or even Peugeot..
I like the new GT86, it looks stunning inside and out and reminds me of the MR2 Mk2 which was and still is a modern looking car even by today’s standard.
The only thing i dont get why 20 years on from the MR2 Turbo and Supra, the GT86 has LESS BHP than the cars from the 1990’s.
With the Supra having 326bhp and MR2 240bhp, why does an advanced and higly development sports car like the GT86 have less than its big brothers?
Sure the Supra had a bigger engine, but the MR2 and GT86 are both housing 2.0 litres under the hood.
Seems like such a shame that the first sports car to come from Toyota in over 6 years is the the least powerful of the bunch.
What happened?!
This car is not about straight line speed.
I dont beleive they released the 240Bhp MR2 in the UK. Jap import only. The GT spec MR2 had 170BHP and was heavier than the GT86 when it stopped production. The first Mk2 MR2 had about 150BHP…..
Also Petrol prices were a bit lower in those days!
Putting a turbo would ruin the response of the car. When driving at the limit you need a flat torque curve and NO TURBO LAG (instant throttle response) to get the best. When the car is sideways and you blip the throttle to control it, turbo lag would make it more difficult to control.
I think toyota are likely to increase the red line on this engine to say 9k RPM to get 250BHP in the future but less likely to turbo/supercharge.