It has been about 6 years now since the BRZ/FR-S/FT86 platform debuted and in the last year or so there have been an increasing amount of rumors that have come out about what the next generation of this car will be.

The latest piece of information to come out is an interview with the Toyota designer of the FT86, Tetsuya Tada, with Australia's Whichcar. In that interview, he said this:

“We have a new 86 team”, and “we have to make a new 86 that surpasses the Supra… that is what the customer expects.”

Tetsuya Tada Toyota 86


Now up to this point, the leading speculation was that Toyota and Subaru were going to continue their partnership on the second-generation 86, and the favored power plant was a version of the 2.4 liter engine in the Subaru Ascent (most likely naturally aspirated). This would be a solid but conservative next step for the platform. It would honestly make a fair amount of sense to go in this direction for both Subaru and Toyota.


But this doesn't fit at all with what Tada has now said. And it is worth remembering that Tada was one of the leading voices that said that they would never make a turbocharged version of the original 86 platform because that isn't how the car was designed. So for him to say that the next 86 will surpass the Supra is significant.


Amazingly, it may not be long before we have a fairly clear picture of what the next 86 car will be, as it is rumored that the car will be shown in some form at the Tokyo Motor Show in October this year.


The biggest question is will Toyota work with Subaru to develop this car, and we will just have to wait and see. But since we are fairly biased to Subaru around here, I wanted to take a minute discuss whether Tada's goal would be possible to achieve working with Subaru.


The first hurdle to surpassing the Supra would be power. But this is most likely the easiest goal to hit working with Subaru. If the designed the new engine around the 2.4 Liter Turbocharged engine in the Ascent, they could easily make more power than the current Supra. I'd wager that 375 - 400 hp would be fairly easily attainable with that engine if Toyota and Subaru wanted to go there. Considering that the new STI (coming in 2021) is supposed to be getting a new direct injected engine, it is possible that Subaru has all ready done most of the development on that engine.


Surpassing the handling and chassis of the Supra may be the hardest part for a Toyota Subaru partnership, but there too, the FT86 chassis shows that it would be possible. The BRZ definitely set a new standard and expectation for the kind of car that Subaru could develop, and working in tandem with the team that made that original leap forward, you would have to assume that they could take another step forward if they were allowed to do so.


In short, they could do it if both companies wanted to. And we will just have to wait (but hopefully not for very long) to see if Toyota and Subaru can team up to give us something to get really excited about.

- Jon Cooley

Here are links to the origional articles:

Gear Patrol Article

Whichcar Article