Goodbye Toyota GT86: Last blast in a sports car great

Indeed it wasn’t. I like the Toyota Supra but, even in its new four-cylinder guise, there’s no chance that it can step on the toes of the GT86. Especially given that it’s way more expensive.

And anyway, even if it could, now the GT86 is gone. Subaru withdrew the BRZ from sale last summer and the last GT86 left Toyota dealerships in February. It’s my favourite car of the past decade, and it’s fair to say that we championed it.

Fat lot of good it did. When Toyota president Akio Toyoda gives interviews, sometimes dressed in a race suit, because he’s that kind of bloke (you would like him), he jokes about what tales he tells the company’s accountants because of making cars like this.

I’ve sat with Tada as he has smiled and said similar things. If Toyota had sold a million GT86s, it might be different, but Toyota’s engineers have had to be creative to justify making this car in limited volumes. As Julius Levinson said in Independence Day about hidden government agency costs (only the latest cultural references here, dear reader): “You don’t actually think they spend $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?” Given that Toyota made a £5.74 billion profit in the past quarter, I imagine its accountants take this kind of thing in good humour.

Anyway, here I am in the $50,000 hammer-and-toilet-seat. One of the last GT86s, a post-facelift car whose 2017 revisions centred on improving the interior and mildly updating the outside but left the ride and handling pretty much alone. Apparently, there were alterations to the dampers and steering but, without a straight back-to-back test I never had, I’m blowed if I could tell. It still feels… well, exactly like I said earlier.

Today, I’m driving it to the coast, in winter, because everything is closed: out of season, out of favour, out of time, playtime is over… you get the idea.

It has been two or three years since I drove a GT86, but the happy familiarities quickly come flooding back. The seating position is good, if higher than I remember, and the manual gearshift is positive. The car feels compact and you can see haunches on the edge of the bonnet, deliberately placed there to make it easier to judge the corners of the car.

People bought hot hatchbacks more than they bought GT86s and BRZs because they needed family-friendly cars, but really the little coupé is more practical than you might think. There’s not a lot of leg room behind the driver, true, but a front passenger can scooch forwards enough to create usable knee space in the back, while the rear seats fold to create a decent-sized load bay.

Less noise, more habitability? Sure, a Volkswagen Golf GTI would be quieter, calmer and easier to step into on a cold winter morning. But the GT86 is still a Toyota, so it warms through and defrosts quickly, it has heated seats and its engine settles to a muted thrum on a motorway.

Ah, the engine. Cue the complaints. Too buzzy, too slow, there’s a flat spot. Look, I know it’s not perfectly smooth and makes ‘only’ 197bhp, but it spins to 7500rpm and it asks you to work it to make progress. Yes, to extract the performance (which, let’s be clear, got this manual car with no launch control from 0-60mph in 7.4sec in our road test, so it isn’t slow) you have to work the engine and gearbox. That was once considered the entire point of a sports car: you put the effort in and it gives rewards back to you.

It did in 2012 and it does now. Heading from the seaside to good South Downs roads I know well, the steering retains its slickness; that light kerb weight, ever so slightly biased towards the front, helps it turn easily and on ordinary 215-section tyres; and there’s enough balance and adjustability for me to know that, even after nine years, this is still one of the best driver’s cars. One that could be ruined if a more potent turbo version replaced it – with a heavier engine, bigger brakes to compensate and, well, reread the previous page.

Subaru won’t bring the next-generation BRZ to the UK, but the Toyota successor will come. Subaru has revealed the car already and it’s not turbocharged. The turbo would necessitate raising the flat four too high, so its 2.4-litre engine makes a naturally aspirated 225bhp at 7000rpm. Praise be.

So cheerio to this car. I’m looking forward to the new GT86 with just as much enthusiasm as I was to the original in the middle of 2011.

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