The new crop of professional drift cars based on the new Toyota/Subaru FT-86 made their debuts at the Odaiba round of the Japanese D1 Drift Series last week.
First is Hibino’s Up Garage car. He is using an EJ-25 engine from a Subaru Impreza. Unfortunately, he crashes it pretty hard in practice:
Next is Manibu “Max” Orido’s FT-86 which is powered by the V8 from a Lexus IS-F.
Taniguchi’s HKS supercharged car was there, but I don’t think it competed. It uses the HKS GT Supercharger kit on the stock based engine.
Here are some highlights of Hibino and Orido during the competition rounds.
This was the featured video of the Toyota Europe YouTube video. Apparently the Icelandic company that made the crazy Top Gear Hilux trucks hasn’t just been sitting around waiting for Top Gear to come up with something else for them to do. They recently set a record for reaching the South Pole.
Toyota unveiled the car they would using to return to Le Mans LMP1 racing earlier this year. It’s called the TS030 (TS stands for Toyota Sport) and it’s a gasoline/electric hybrid. The gasoline end of things is taken care of by a 3.4 liter V8. Toyota’s press release stated that they were still deciding on which electric motor system they were going to use. The rules limit them to driving only one of the axles with an electrical system. Toyota was considering a system by Aisin for driving the front wheels and a Denso system to drive the rear wheels. The energy storage duties will be handled by an ultra-capacitor made by Nisshinbo. Capacitors are much lighter than batteries and are better suited for the high energy charging and discharging duties of road racing. The car will operate in pure EV mode in the pit lane.
Unfortunately the last news I heard about this car was that there was a crash in testing which would push back it’s official debut. Toyota Europe released this video with the press release announcing the car. It’s in-car footage of Alex Wurz driving the TS030 around the Paul Ricard track in France. Pay attention to how the car sounds as it first leaves the pit under electric power only.
If you’re like me, then you’ve been closely following the development of the Toyota FT-86 since the camouflaged development mules were first spotted on the Nurburgring. That’s because Toyota’s official press release for the car claimed that they were going to revisit the sports car heritage responsible for their previous classics like the 2000GT, Supra, Celica Alltrac, AE86 and MR2.
Toyota FT-86 Concept with Previous Toyota Sports Cars. From left to right: ST205 Celica Alltrac, JZA80 Supra, AE86 Corolla GT-S
The promise of the FT-86 was an affordable, lightweight and sporty rear wheel drive car for the masses, but there was doubt. The development of the car was funded by Toyota but largely carried out by Subaru who specializes in all wheel drive rally cars, not rear wheel drive sports cars. A lot of doubts swirled among the enthusiast community as the FT-86 got closer to production. Will Subaru be able to figure out how to make a good rear wheel drive car? Will Toyota sell a truly fun car after years of bland transportation appliances? Will it really hit the market at under $25,000? It all seemed too good to be true. Thankfully, it wasn’t.
Chris Harris had the opportunity to drive the FT-86 (known as the GT-86 in the UK, Scion FR-S here in the US) for the Drive YouTube Channel. The reason I absolutely love Harris’s reviews is because he doesn’t just say “this car is fast” or “this car handles well” unlike a certain terrible American version of a British car show where 2 of 3 hosts are people who aren’t into cars. He goes so much further in depth to paint a picture for you of exactly what it’s like to be in the driver’s seat and that’s what car reviews should be. His review of the FT-86 demolished all of my doubts about the development of the car. Toyota and Subaru have done it. They made a fun, driver focused rear wheel drive car for the masses. It’s going to be awesome.
The Toyota FT-86 is a new compact sports car co-developed between Subaru and Toyota. The inspiration was to create a affordable, compact, lightweight, rear wheel drive sports car similar to the Toyota AE86 from the 80’s. Production of the new car has just started in Japan and the tuners there have already started working on aftermarket parts for it. Designer Jon Sibal rounded up pictures and videos from some of the big name tuners. This is Manabu “Max” Orido’s IS-F Powered D1 competition car for this year:
Manibu "Max" Orido's IS-F Powered FT-86 from JonSibal.com
Check out the article on Jon Sibal’s site to see pictures and video of the rest of the tuned FT-86’s including ones from URAS, R-Magic and HKS.
