Many enthusiasts have dreamed for years of seeing a turbocharged engine appear under the hood of the coupe Toyota GR86. Despite a boost in power with the arrival of the latest generation in 2021, some were disappointed to find only the naturally aspirated engine under the hood of Toyota’s rear-wheel-drive light sports coupe.
It’s now done, you may see a handful of Toyota GR86s equipped with the turbocharged engine of the Toyota GR Corolla; unfortunately, this is not a new production model, and these cars are not offered to the public. Toyota has confirmed that it has built a few GR86s equipped with the G16E-GTS engine, the turbocharged 1.6-litre 3-cylinder found under the hood of the Toyota GR Yaris and GR Corolla. The news was reported by the media CarSales and confirmed by the manufacturer.
They are in fact development vehicles modified by Toyota’s Gazoo Racing division, which intends to use them to test certain racing applications and, above all, to use them as a test bed in the development of new synthetic fuels. . We know that Toyota, like Porsche and Mazda, intends to reduce the use of gasoline and diesel by developing synthetic fuels that are cleaner and less polluting.
Toyota does not reject the idea of a production model
All is not lost as, when asked about the possibility of the model going into production, Gazoo Racing’s chief engineer, Naoyuki Sakamoto, mentioned that they were studying the idea of using this engine in the future, but that nothing was in the plans at the moment. The cars are used only on racing circuits, they will be featured in the Super Taikyu racing series, in Japan.
Conclusion
The Toyota GR86 with a naturally aspirated 2.4-litre 4-cylinder engine is already a high-performance, pleasant and balanced car. A test of the GR Corolla will allow us to see how this turbocharged 3-cylinder behaves before deciding on the interest of such a mechanism for the GR86.
