ToyoTa’s light relief The rear-drive FT-86 will be the first offering from Toyota’s new ‘fun department’, set up to create more exciting cars. It should be enough to make us forget about the recalls, says Steve Sutcliffe PHOTOGRAPHY STuarT price
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Toyota FT-86 | In Detail
Ultra-slim lights disguise small air intakes
Zipped leather fascia dominates front cabin
A
nyone with even the faintest scent of petrol in their veins has surely, at some point in recent years, sat and watched videos, mouth agape, of Japanese cars being drifted through the streets of Tokyo. If you’ve never visited Japan before, you could even be forgiven for thinking that this is how everyone behaves over there: get up in the morning, polish rear-drive Corolla until it gleams, go drifting all day, go back to bed wondering about how to perfect sideways technique through that particularly tricky underpass section beneath the HSBC building. This is not, just in case you were wondering, how anyone actually drives on the streets of Tokyo nowadays; the local authorities all but stamped out the illegal drift scene some years ago. But that hasn’t prevented the good people of Japan from continuing to dream the dream. And that now includes the world’s largest car maker, Toyota, which is on the cusp of launching an all-new car aimed squarely at the PlayStation generation. Although it’s officially still just a concept, be under no illusion: the Toyota FT-86 you see here will go on sale in 2012, with a target price around the $30,000 mark for the entry-level model. Rumour has it, in fact, that the front-engined, rear-drive FT-86 will be announced as a production reality at this month’s Geneva show – assuming, of course, that Toyota and Subaru can settle their differences before the show, having co-developed the project and then fallen out behind the scenes over who should be allowed to go public first. Toyota, it would appear, jumped the gun somewhat when it unveiled its version of the “Toyobaru” last year, about which Subaru remains not best pleased. Whatever the politics involved behind this car’s creation, it’s clear that Toyota ◊ March 2010 WWW.AUTOCARmAG.COm 69
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Does this remind you of a PlayStation game? It’s meant to
Grown-up GranTurismo drifters will sit here
Cech calls fascia zips ‘simple but functional’
Q&A Jaromir Cech, senior designer What was the design brief for the car? The first ideas we had came after some feedback we got from the engineering people. They told us they’d been testing this car, and that it drove just like a go-kart. And so we thought, “Well, we need to make a car that looks like it drives like a go-kart.”
So when did you first start designing it? A little over two years ago, since when the idea has been refined, obviously, but still with those same themes at the centre: driver focus, purity of form and functional beauty.
Were there any influences apart from the original rear-drive Corolla?
The Corolla represents a lot of the FT’s basic design influence, but really there are a number of cars that we looked at, from the Supra to the original MR2.
You were primarily responsible for the interior; which bits are you most proud of, and which aspect do you think will make it into production? I’m proud of the interior. It’s deliberately extremely driver-orientated and contains quite a few fresh ideas, especially within the modular dash design. I’m not sure whether the zips idea for the doorbins will make it into production — it may prove too difficult to mass-produce — but I hope one day we’ll see something like it in a production Toyota because it’s a simple, but also functional solution.
∆ means business with the FT-86. This is a deadly serious attempt to take a slice of the lucrative affordable coupé market; think anything from Hyundai Coupé to Audi TT. But this car is also intended to recapture and repackage the DNA that made so popular Toyota’s most exciting cars from the past; think Celica, MR2, Supra and, most obvious of all, the rear-drive Corolla AE86 coupé, the car that provides the FT-86 not only with its name but also its “joyful driving spirit”, according to Toyota. If the phrase itself has got lost in translation somewhat, the charm of the FT-86 is still achingly apparent when you encounter it for the first time in the metal. For starters, it’s no more than two-thirds the size you’d expect it to be. When we line it up nose to nose with our long-term Audi TT RS, the Audi dwarfs it physically – and the TT is not a big car. The most striking aspect about the FT-86, apart from its size, is how low the bonnet line is and how snugly the whole car seems to hug the ground as a result. This is almost entirely because the engine is a version of Subaru’s famous flat-four 2.0-litre “boxer” unit, which by design sits unusually low to the ground, hence the low bonnet line. How low? According to senior Toyota designer Jaromir Cech (see panel, left), the bonnet is “around 100mm” lower than it would be with a conventional four-cylinder engine in place.
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Toyota FT-86 | In Detail
sports cars, a life
‘The FT-86 is a straightforward, pure device, one that will be focused on satisfying whoever is behind the whee l’
By the Toyota Motor Corporation This was Toyota’s 1967-1970 2000 GT first proper foray into the sports cars market, and although it was produced in very limited numbers (just 337 were made), it still managed to put Toyota on the map as far as enthusiasts were concerned. It had a 2.0-litre straight-six engine powering the rear wheels, and was described at the time as “the first Japanese supercar”.
1983-1987 Corolla levin ae86 Very much the car that has had the most influence over the FT-86’s character (including part of its name), the rear-drive Corolla was the fifth generation of the model, and was by far the sportiest version. It had 1.5- and 1.6-litre, four-cylinder, twin-cam engines with up to 127bhp — not bad, considering the kerb weight was listed at between 880kg and 941kg.
“It won’t be quite as low as this for the production car,” Cech explains. “Unfortunately we’ll have to raise it by maybe 50mm to meet pedestrian crash protection legislation. But it’ll still be a lot lower than normal. “I think the final version will still look pretty good. It will still feature the same compact proportions and have the same driver-focused personality,” says Cech, smiling the smile of someone who inherently knows that he and his team have delivered the goods, and delivered them with room to spare. So how will the FT-86 differ in what it offers, both mechanically and in character, to separate it from the herd when it goes on sale in 2012? On paper, what we are talking about is a fairly traditional 2+2 front-engined design – with nothing especially tricky about its suspension (wishbones at the front, probably, multi-link at the rear, almost certainly), transmission (six-speed manual) or chassis (conventional rearwheel drive). What will make it special, claims Toyota, is its ultra-light kerb weight (possibly as little as 1250kg in production trim), its purity of response, its handling agility and the fact that it will have a proper limited-slip differential. Yes, the FT-86 will, says Cech, be driftable. That’s why there is also likely to be a stripped-out model, with smaller wheels
and narrower tyres than the big 225/40 ZR19 items worn by the concept car, and these will enable it to drift properly. Another distinguishing feature of the FT-86 will be its interior, and in particular its dashboard. In the concept this currently looks like a cross between the Ministry of Sound and the average teenager’s games console, but the eventual idea will be to provide a platform for serious enthusiasts to be fully ‘at one’ with their car. This may even include software that provides data acquisition for a host of circuits, allowing you to work out how far away from a perfect lap time you are, or even how far from a perfect corner speed you may be. The more you learn about the FT-86, the more obvious it becomes that this is Toyota’s attempt to tune in to a market that, at the moment, largely exists in cyberspace, within the fantasies of today’s PlayStation generation. But in a few years’ time, they will have real money, to spend on a very real driver’s car. It’s a simple, but refreshing idea, and in a way the car itself reflects that. Despite its 21st-century styling, the FT-86 is actually a very straightforward, pure device, one that will be focused almost entirely on satisfying whoever is lucky enough to be behind the wheel. Much like the original rear-drive Corolla was, in other words. The sooner it goes into production, the better. L
The Celica name 1970-2006 CeliCa (inC GT4) has been applied to various Toyotas since 1970, but the one that hit the spot was the first frontdrive version that appeared in 1986. This four-cylinder model provided the incisive handling and performance that had been lacking on reardrive versions. It also provided the platform for a four-wheeldrive rally challenger. The first mR2 1984-2007 Mr2 appeared in 1984. It was affordable and mid-engined and was called a latter-day Lotus Elan. It was a belting good driver’s car, with a sweetrevving 1.6-litre engine and a rifle-bolt five-speed ’box. The mk2 put on weight and gained performance, but wasn’t as crisp to drive, while the mk3 model received mixed reviews for its styling, but drove more like the original. There have been four 1979-2002 Supra different Supras, produced between 1979 and 2002, but three of them are best forgotten. Still, the mk4 was a great car, providing Porsche-crushing pace and sharp handling courtesy of its twin-turbo straight-six engine and rear-drive chassis. The only problem was it cost as much as a Porsche as well. These days it’s a used bargain.
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