The Return of the Tuner Car The Toyota FT 86

Back in the late 90's car companies normally associated with utilitarian vehicles started realizing the cars that they thought were run of the mill were becoming popular. Cars like the Honda Civic and the Acura Integras were being tuned by their owners to run with Corvettes and cars like the Toyota Supra were being compared to super cars. This trend to tuning was picked up by the media, Internet Forums, and there were even a few movies made about it.  Eventually the car companies got wind of this and started releasing tuner vehicles of their own.

What ended up happening was watered down economy cars carrying the brands and badges of what were once fierce tuning companies, or genuine tuner cars that were approaching luxury car prices. The generic run of the mill car that could be tuned to a track monster without breaking the bank was seemingly gone.

Honda now offers only the Civic Si with not much more power than it had 10 years ago and the Acura Integra/RSX...not even made anymore. Toyota, well there is nothing really exciting unless you step up to the IS-F. Then along came Hyundai, trying to shake things up a bit, releasing their Genesis coupe. A sporty RWD car that offers a manual transmission. A recipe that made the word Toyota a once powerful performance word,when it could be associated with the Supra Turbo. Now it seems that Toyota will enter that arena again, and not with the super car that they have had in development for many years.

Toyota has announced the new FT-86 Sports Car. The name is based upon the legendary Toyota Corolla from the mid 80s, which is a drifting legend. The FT-86 will be Rear Wheel Drive and power will be fed to those wheels via Subarus Boxer motor. This is the normally aspirated version of the motor that appears in the WRX.

So now once again, we have a potentially affordable car that carries the name and reliability of one of the top car companies, but with the potential to be a track animal once again. Most people already know the potential of the Subaru boxer and pairing with a Toyota RWD chassis (remember that Supra again), sounds like a hit. Already Toyota FT-86 forums are appearing on the web in wait of this new vehicle. Now the waiting begins for it to hit the showroom floors.