Toyota GT 86 Supercharged planned

Toyota GT 86 Supercharged in development

With the Toyota GT 86 now revealed, it seems Toyota are working on a more powerful supercharged version.

The Toyota GT 86 is now properly out in the open, and it promises to offer lots of fun in a light and appealing package. Almost a modern version of the MX5, but hardly the Toyota equivalent of the Porsche Cayman Toyota would like us to think.

The GT 86 hasn’t quite hit the mark, at least according to most who’ve actually got behind the wheel of Toyota’s ‘affordable’ sports car. With just 197bhp it seems you need to work the GT 86 quite hard to get real fun, with not a lot of torque on offer, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to come close to the target price of £20k – more like £28k by the time it arrives in the UK in the Summer of 2012.

But, just like Subaru with the BRZ, it seems Toyota are planning a more powerful version of the GT 86, but unlike Subaru, who are planning to add a turbo to the BRZ to get close to the 300bhp promised for the BRZ, Toyota look set to make the GT 86 a supercharged job, put together by Toyota Racing Development (TRD).

Toyota Chief Engineer Tetsuo Tada has confirmed that TRD are working on a supercharged version of the GT 86, and that prototypes are already out and about testing. The consensus – as Tetsuo Tada didn’t give any figures for the power of the supercharged GT 86 – is that supercharging will yield an extra 50bhp. But that doesn’t seem enough to us.

Subaru seem likely to get close to 300bhp with a turbocharged version of the BRZ, so 247bhp from a supercharged GT 86 seems unlikely. Subaru may be responsible for the engines in both the GT 86 and BRZ, but Toyota are most certainly the senior partner in this particular relationship.

So, when the Toyota GT 86 Supercharged does finally arrive, we’d be very surprised if it didn’t come with at least as much power as the BRZ Turbo. That would mean a much more appealing 300bhp.

And maybe then Toyota can start to draw parallels between the GT 86 and Cayman.