New Toyota 86 Coming Soon?

Recently when I browse the Malaysia Toyota official website, I found out one of its flash advertisement playing "All New Toyota 86, Coming Soon".

The Toyota AE86 is getting wellknown in Malaysia due to the famous Japanese animation story of "Initial D", but since than the AE86 can be consider old model at present.

But it seem the new Toyota 86 is not the replacement of AE86 at least at the engine side as it doesn't using the A series engine anymore.

Here is some fact from wikipedia, infact this engine got some relation to Subaru BRZ.

The Toyota 86 is a sports car developed jointly by Japanese automobile manufacturers Toyota and Subaru. It has 2+2 seats, a 2-door coupé body style and a front-engine, rear-wheel drive layout.

The model will be sold under three different brands: Toyota (Toyota 86 in Japan and Australia and Toyota GT-86 in Europe), Subaru (Subaru BRZ) and Scion (Scion FR-S). "86" (pronounced "eight-six" or Hachi-Roku (ハチロク)) refers to the Toyota AE86, a car sold in the 1980s. As such, the Toyota 86 has been named as the spiritual successor of the original AE86 during the press release of the 86. The Toyota and Scion have little distinguishing elements - the latter has cheaper pieces to reduce base price in the United States. The Subaru BRZ differs mainly in its front end, where the grille has an hexagonal shape versus an inverted trapezoid in the Toyota and Scion, along with the placement of the BRZ as the most luxurious variant of the platform, with more standard features and a higher suggested price than the Toyota-marketed versions.

It was first presented as a concept car at the October 2009 Tokyo Motor Show under the name Toyota FT-86, FT being shorthand for "Future Toyota". Later, a high-performance version was launched at the January 2010 Tokyo Auto Salon as the Toyota FT-86 G Sports. At the 2011 Geneva Motor Show, a third concept car was shown, the Toyota FT-86 II. The BRZ and FR-S also had their concept cars, the Subaru BRZ Concept STI and the Scion FR-S Concept. The production version of the 86, BRZ and FR-S were unveiled at the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show.

Initially, the 86 and sister models will feature a Subaru-sourced naturally aspirated 2.0 L flat-4 boxer gasoline engine (Toyota engine code 4U-GSE, Subaru engine code FA20) that will deliver 200 PS (147 kW; 197 hp) that includes a direct injection system from Toyota. The model will be offered with two six-speed transmissions: a manual and an automatic with paddle shifters. The weight of the 86 is 1,180 to 1,250 kilograms (2,600 to 2,760 lb) depending on specification and equipment.

On 16th of March 2012 an line-off ceremony was held at Subaru’s Gunma Main Plant (Ota-city, Gunma Prefecture, Japan) with Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) President Akio Toyoda and honored guests in attendance, in commemoration of the production start of the Subaru BRZ and Toyota 86. FHI and TMC first agreed on business collaboration in October 2005. After the companies expanded their cooperative ties with new agreements related to development and production in April 2008, they then began four years of development. The completion of this joint-development product also marks a great achievement of the alliance between FHI and TMC. During the first month since February 2nd 2012 Toyota received 7,000 pre-orders on Toyota 86 model in Japan. First Toyota 86 sales are scheduled to begin on April 6th.