It’s been over five years since the Toyota 86 and Subaru BRZ hit the market, and if you’re still hoping to see turbocharged versions of each sports car anytime soon, you have a better chance of seeing Ferrari build a four-cylinder hatchback. It’s not happening. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever -- at least not in this generation, anyway.

2018 Toyota 86 shown here}


Tetsuya Tada, the chief engineer for both the 86 and the upcoming Supra, completely shut the door on the possibility of seeing a turbocharged 86 this late in the car’s run. In a conversation with CarAdvice at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show, Tada said that if Toyota built a turbocharged 86, it would have to completely reconfigure the car to accommodate the inclusion of the turbos. “If we come up with a turbo version of the 86 and boost up the power that would result in the necessity of changing the basic configuration completely, to come up with a car that I would be satisfied with,” he said.

2017 Subaru BRZ shown here}


Tada added that the 86 was designed to be to an agile and versatile sports car. As such, the car’s weight distribution was tailored specifically for its powertrain. The inclusion of a turbocharger could compromise that weight distribution, and that would force Toyota to, in Tada’s words, “come up with a completely new platform.”

Engine bay from the 2017 Toyota 86 shown here}


So yes, it’s not as easy as slapping a turbocharger into the 86’s 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine. The good news is that all the feedback Toyota received from aggrieved fans who wanted a turbocharged 86 didn’t fall on deaf ears. If the Japanese automaker decides to make a second-generation version of the 86, a turbocharged version isn’t out of the question completely.

spy shot of the upcoming, 2019 Toyota Supra shown here.}


But, that’s a conversation for another time. What’s equally important is that in a separate interview with Autoguide, Tada admitted that Toyota took the lessons it learned from the 86 and applied a lot of it in the development of the Toyota Supra. Chief among these lessons is the need to make the engine more tunable, which would give Toyota the flexibility to increase the sports car’s output if necessary.

References

Toyota 86

Read up all about the 2017 Toyota 86 in our latest review}

Subaru BRZ

Read up what your favorite TopSpeed Experts had to say about the 2017 Subaru BRZ! }