The Toyota GR86 shares its platform with the Subaru BRZ. The two rear-wheel-drive sports coupes were jointly developed by Toyota and Subaru and are built around the same basic architecture.
The GR86 is the successor to the Toyota 86, which was sold in some markets as the GT86 and in North America as the Scion FR-S. Subaru sells the closely related car as the BRZ. Both generations were assembled at Subaru’s Gunma plant in Japan, but Toyota and Subaru tuned and styled their versions differently.
The current GR86 and BRZ use a front-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout and a Subaru-sourced horizontally opposed engine. The second-generation cars received a larger 2.4-liter naturally aspirated flat-four, replacing the earlier generation’s 2.0-liter engine. Toyota’s GR86 generally emphasizes a livelier, more oversteer-friendly character, while Subaru’s BRZ is often described as slightly more stable or compliant.
A common mix-up is treating the GR86 as the same model as the original Toyota 86. They are related successors, not identical model names: “86” refers to the earlier generation, while “GR86” is the Toyota Gazoo Racing-branded second-generation car.