2026 Toyota GR86 Reviews, Pricing & Specs

The GR86 is a tiny, low-set coupe with the long hood, short deck proportions of a classic sports car. It’s sleek but not quite beautiful. The nose features a simple grille positioned low and flanked by prominent right-angle air intakes. The LED headlights lay at an angle leading into a hood that curves up from the nose to the windshield. The roof curves back down to an available integrated ducktail spoiler. Along the sides, the wheels are pushed to the corners, air vents sit behind the front wheels, and the rocker panels rise toward the rear tires.

The wheel and tire package isn’t the typical stuff of sports cars. The wheels are relatively small at 17 or 18 inches, the tires aren’t staggered front to rear, and the GR86 even comes with standard all-season treads. Black wheels are standard on the Yuzu Edition limited-run model. A dual exhaust is standard and can be finished in black or swapped for a GR performance exhaust.

The interior is sporty but utilitarian. Performance-themed elements include a small steering wheel, metal-faced pedals (in all but the base trim), sport bucket seats, and a traditional pull-up parking brake lever. The thickly bolstered front seats have cloth upholstery in the base model and synthetic suede and leather upholstery in the Premium and Yuzu Edition trims, while all have contrast stitching that is also found on other surfaces. That stitching is yellow in the Yuzu Edition to go with the exterior.

Otherwise, the cabin has a smallish eight-inch touchscreen and a lot of hard plastic surfaces, which are somewhat offset by synthetic suede door tops and soft-touch armrests on the door panels and centre console. In all, it feels just above budget-grade.

Few vehicles are as fun to drive as the Toyota GR86. It’s right up there with the Mazda MX-5.

Buyers have a choice: do you want your GR86s to grip or slide? The base model comes standard with 215/45R17 Michelin Primacy all-season tires — the type normally found on a sedan daily driver — and they’re no wider or grippier. With these tires, the GR86 can easily overcome the traction on the rear wheels to let the rear end kick out in corners.

The best part about that is how easy it is to handle the GR86 at or beyond the limit of adhesion. It’s very neutral with a tendency for oversteer that is easily controlled with quick opposite-direction steering corrections or by simply letting off the throttle. At this point, drivers can balance the car with the throttle, adding gas to steer with the tail and letting off to allow the front tires to point the car in the desired direction.

The other choice is the Michelin Pilot Sport 4 tires on the Premium and Yuzu models. These summer performance tires have more grip to shorten lap times, carve through corners, or tackle the lefts and rights of an autocross. These 215/40R18s are no wider than the standard tires, so while they add grip, the engine’s power can still break them free and turn the GR86 into a drift machine. With either setup, it’s incredibly fun.

But that’s not all to delight the driver. The quick and direct steering is among the sharpest on the market, aided by this light and low-set car’s immediate turn-in response. (It weighs only 1,287 kilograms (2,837 pounds) in Premium trim with the manual transmission.) The steering has some decent heft, too, to help make it stable. The GR86 changes direction even better than the MX-5 thanks to less body lean, though the lean there works as useful feedback.

Our U.S.-spec Premium test vehicle came with four additional performance enhancements (though some are not offered in Canada). The Brembo brakes, which are exclusive to the Yuzu Edition in Canada, offer better heat dissipation when running hard, and the Yuzu’s Sachs dampers deliver greater body control. An accessory $1,107 GR Performance strut tie brace ties the front end together a little better for even quicker turn-in. The $2,273 accessory GR Performance stabilizer bars are the most controversial to us as they increase front stiffness by 200% and rear stiffness by 276%. While this helps to reduce body roll, it was likely the reason for our test vehicle's harsh ride. Every pavement seam and expansion joint became an enemy, not to mention potholes, as the suspension sent a shock through the cabin. Skip these bars as they make an otherwise firm but pleasant ride overly harsh.

Power from the 2.4-litre flat-four engine is modest at 228 horsepower and 184 pound-feet of torque, but the way it’s delivered makes it fun. The power flows to the rear wheels through a six-speed manual or a six-speed automatic transmission. It goes to the pavement effectively thanks to a standard Torsen limited-slip rear differential that apportions power along the rear axle for maximum traction.

The manual is the clear choice here. It has short shifts, positive engagement, and a natural clutch feel. Better yet, it’s the best way to take advantage of the engine’s willingness to rev all the way to its 7,500 rpm redline. That lets drivers get the most out of the family sedan power, unlocking a 0-100 km/h time in the six-second range. With the automatic, the 0-100 km/h sprint is in the mid-six-to-seven-second range.

The GR86 doesn’t do a great job of filtering noise out of its cabin, and the engine sings a flat midrange tune that starts to intrude on conversation above 4,000 rpm. Sports car fans will like it, but their passengers may not.

The GR86 has a tiny cabin to go with its tiny footprint. It lacks space up front and especially in the rear, and it requires a step down to get in and core strength to get out. A friend, who is a full-figured gentleman, asked if this car comes in extra-large.

Up front, the GR86 has a standard six-way manually adjustable driver's seat with a four-way passenger seat, both heated in the Premium and Yuzu. The seats are wide enough that they don’t pinch bigger backsides, but legroom can be cramped. At 5'9" and with short legs, our right knee made contact with the bezel around the start button on the dash, which prompted moving the seat back a little more than we would have preferred.

The centre console itself is poorly laid out for ergonomics. It has no tray at the front for phones or keys or snacks, and the console bin sits behind the driver’s elbow where it’s hard to reach and can be intrusive when it's open.

The rear seat is nigh on useless. Few passengers will fit back there, so it’s better for packages. The rear seatback folds down as a single unit to improve on the cargo space of the tiny 178-litre trunk. Weekend racers can fit a set of four wheels and tires back there for a track day, so space is somewhat useful with the rear seatback down.

The GR86 doesn’t go big on tech, but it has the basics. The standard eight-inch touchscreen is small by current standards, but it sits in a small cabin. The screen layout feels dated with its home, phone, apps, and radio buttons, as well as up and down or next and back buttons. There is also a dial for radio tuning, which is ideal for scrolling through satellite radio stations.

The screen also works with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, but they're wired. Under the Apps icon is SiriusXM Travel Link, which can show fuel prices, sports scores, stocks, weather, and local parking options.

Toyota also provides a 7-inch digital instrument cluster with a central tachometer and Sport and Track layouts. The left and the right sides of the screen can show various types of information including a lap timer, a g-meter, rpm and horsepower/torque curves, fuel economy, trip meters, outside temperature, and engine coolant/oil temperatures, among others.

Buyers also get access to Toyota Service Connect, Safety Connect, and Remote Connect, all of which require a subscription. Service Connect provides vehicle health reports and maintenance updates. Safety Connect includes emergency assistance, roadside assistance, and a stolen vehicle locator. Remote Connect employs an app to do things like start the car or unlock/lock doors remotely, check parking location, and monitor guest drivers.

No GR86 has a thumpin’ audio system. The base version has six speakers, and an eight-speaker audio system comes in the Premium and Yuzu. An accessory subwoofer is available. A three-month satellite radio trial is standard, and a subscription is required after that.

How safe is the GR86? It’s hard to say. It comes with a basic level of standard safety equipment and has an incomplete crash test record. The latter is likely because small-volume sports cars rarely get complete crash tests.

In Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) testing, the GR86 gets only a Good rating for its headlights and for its front crash prevention vehicle-to-pedestrian collision prevention systems. It hasn’t been subjected to the IIHS’s other tests, so it can’t get a Top Safety Pick or Top Safety Pick+ award from that organization. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) crash test ratings were also unavailable at the time of writing.

The GR86’s standard safety suite includes only basic cruise control and high beam assist. Blind spot monitoring and rear cross-traffic alert are offered on all Premium and Yuzu Edition vehicles, while only the Premium with the automatic transmission comes with adaptive headlights, forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, and lead vehicle start alert. (The latter is a feature familiar to Subaru owners, a hint at the long list of shared equipment between the jointly developed GR86 and Subaru BRZ.)

That’s not as many safety features as most cars have nowadays, and the GR86 offers no safety-related options. It’s a sports car, so a hands-free highway driving system doesn’t seem necessary, but parking sensors would be a good idea given how low the car sits. The systems it had worked well during our drive without interfering too often.

Toyota offers the 2026 GR86 in Canada in three trim levels: base, Premium, and Yuzu Edition. The base model starts at $34,755 including an $1,860 destination fee and is manual only. The Premium runs $37,755 with the manual transmission and $39,720 with the automatic. For the Yuzu Edition, which is also manual only, pricing starts at $46,855.

The Yuzu Edition is both a performance and an exterior package. It comes with matte black wheels with gloss black lug nuts, Brembo brakes, Sachs dampers, yellow interior accent stitching, black interior trim, a commemorative plaque, and Yuzu yellow paint.

The automatic transmission is the choice for fuel economy. Automatic models are rated by Natural Resources Canada at 11.2 litres per 100 kilometres in the city, 7.9 on the highway, and 9.7 combined. With the manual, those numbers increase to 12.0 L/100 km city, 8.9 highway, and 10.6 combined. We did even better, averaging 9.4 L/100 km over 270 kilometres of mixed city and highway driving in our manual tester.

Given our tester's hard ride, we’d recommend going with the Premium trim for the larger wheels and summer performance tires and choosing the manual transmission. Skip the accessory GR Performance stabilizer bars, which are the likely culprit of the harsh ride, but maybe choose the GR Performance strut tie brace as well. Also, pick a fun colour. What’s a sports car for if not to show off?