Thread: Top 12 cars of 2012: Toyota GT86

The GT86 lives up to Toyota's billing of it as a pure sports car; a real driver's tool, and one for the history books. Tucked away in the intestines of Autocars offices, in an utterly anonymous stairwell, there are shelves groaning under the weight of a 100-year archive. They are bound in huge, pulpit-style books, covered in dust and inked in history. They are the independent automotive record of the past century.
All new models are recorded and ranked among the pages, of course, but very few become a reference for the future or worthy of revisiting in subsequent decades. This year, 2012, has produced a handful of such cars at the most. The Toyota GT86 is one of them.
And not just because of the way it drives, although well come to that. Not because it received a rare five stars in our road test or earned the coveted Britains Best Drivers Car title, even though both accolades usually guarantee a lasting prestige. No, its because the GT86, a car summoned into being on the basis of delighting its driver, was not designed and engineered by Porsche or Lotus or Ferrari; it was coaxed from the benign, dour leviathan that Toyota has become, with the help of the conglomerate backwater that is Subaru.
The senior partner in the deal had shown recent previous, perhaps, with the introduction of the freakish Lexus LFA in 2010, but that was lunacy contained within the padded cell of a 330,000 price. The GT86 is intended as an entry point for the general public – for mass production, the domain of numbers, scale and discipline.
Possibly that is why it took so long to get right. The car, which has just nine per cent commonality with its siblings, seemed to dawdle through several vague stages before Toyota chief engineer Tetsuya Tada and his Subaru counterpart, Toshio Masuda, were apparently convinced.
What we wouldnt give to have been present during its prolonged development. To find out who said what, who stipulated all that purity (rear-wheel drive, no turbocharging, ordinary tyres), who insisted on the precision and weight and focus, and if any of them realised what a revelation the final product would be.
Because thats what were left with: a car that not only eschews the false idols of outright grip and ever more extreme pace but also stands as an irresistible sermon to the rival possibility of low-speed, high-happiness handling. That combination, as in the original Mazda MX-5 before it, makes the GT86 the quintessential road car solution for a world increasingly disdainful of or terminally unsuited to the thrill of high velocity.
Nevertheless, it is not perfect. Not everyone is a diehard fan and we, too, recognise its shortcomings. But, as we pointed out in our definitive verdict in the summer, the package is so well conceived, and so persuasively delivered, that the threat of diminishing the car in any way shadows any possible alteration.
More power? Perhaps, but it isnt intended to be fast and a turbo would likely ruin the perfectly poised throttle response. A bigger, better, quieter interior? Well, okay, but we wouldnt want to add a single solitary kilogram to Tadas and Masudas hard-won 1275kg kerb weight. A slightly smaller price? Certainly. Because then we could all afford one.
But, for once, were content to let Toyota squeeze a profit out of this particular model. The firm has earned it.