It’s August 6 today, and while it sounds like just another regular day in the month of August, it means something else for car enthusiasts: It’s 8/6 Day. On this day each year, we all celebrate the hachiroku, one of the automotive world’s greatest creations.
Uncoincidentally, on 8/6 Day this year, Toyota also decided to unveil the updated 86. It’s not a massive update, but this one’s a new version nonetheless. We think there was also no better day than today to reveal this, but we digress.
On the outside, the GR86 sees no aesthetic tweaks, but it does get a new Solid Gray finish. This was a color option with the 86 that was offered for a limited time in 2017. On the inside, the changes are subtle but meaningful—Toyota has redesigned the switches to make them easier to use and less reflective. The latter not only makes the surfaces look classier but also reduces distractions for the driver. There are also red accents added onto the driver’s side of the cockpit.
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Toyota has also adjusted the throttle control settings of the GR86 to improve traction on corner exits as well as on low-friction surfaces. The electric power-steering control has also been tuned to eliminate wobbling in high-speed corners and on rough surfaces.
As for the manual GR86 variant, Toyota has also made downshifting from fifth to fourth gear smoother, specifically by making the chamfer on the shift interlock broader by 0.5mm. There’s a photo above to show what exactly Toyota did. Lastly, Toyota added a third camera to the EyeSight’s original dual-camera setup to improve the safety system’s performance.
Toyota also added an automatic variant to the GR86 Cup Car Basic, which is the competition model for the brand’s OMR series in Japan for the GR86 and Subaru BRZ twins. Not that it matters to us, because we don’t have such a race series here in the Philippines. At least not yet...
Anyway, would you like to see these changes for the GR86 make their way to our market?
More photos of the updated Toyota GR86 2027:
