• Economical for a sports car
• Fantastic 10-year warranty
• Reasonable servicing costs

What are the running costs?

Toyota claims the GR86 can return up to 32mpg under official WLTP conditions and we found that figure to be quite accurate in the real world. We covered 1,000 miles in the first two weeks of running our long-term GR86 on a mixture of motorways, A-roads and country lanes – and we averaged 30mpg. We certainly weren’t trying to drive economically, either.

Counter intuitively, the GR86’s larger-capacity engine really helps your fuel economy. The GT86’s 2.0-litre engine had to be worked incredibly hard to get the best performance it – and that meant you ended up driving it everywhere at full throttle, which is rubbish for your fuel consumption.

The new car’s 2.4-litre engine has more torque (pulling power) lower down in its rev range, which means you don’t need to thrash it up to the redline if you want to go quickly. And because you don’t need to use all the power all the time, you chew through fuel more slowly.

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CO2 figures are 200g/km across the board for both the manual and automatic versions of the GR86. That’s not bad for a sports car – for context, the four-cylinder Porsche 718 Cayman (which has a smaller turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol engine) produces between 201 and 220g/km of CO2 depending on spec.

Bear in mind that the Porsche also has an extra 69hp and is slightly heavier, which explains the extra emissions output. If Toyota had embraced turbocharging technology for the GR86, we expect it would have be a lot more efficient. It wouldn’t have been anywhere near as fun to drive, though.

Servicing and warranty

The Toyota GR86’s service intervals are set at every 10,000 miles. The service prices are fixed, and you can also buy plans which you pay for on a monthly basis.

All new Toyotas come with a three-year warranty as standard, with no limit on mileage. But if you service the car at a main dealer, that guarantee extends annually up to 10 years/100,000 miles, giving market-leading peace of mind. This programme is called Toyota Relax, which you can learn more about by reading our dedicated Toyota warranty explainer page.

Reliability

• Toyota has a great reputation
• Build quality is exemplary
• Some issues for US buyers, though

The GR86 is a Toyota, which means its reliability should be a given. However, some US owners have experienced some major issues. The problem related to an excess amount of sealant on the oil sump and timing cover that would break off and contaminate the oil.

It clogged the oil pickup tube on some cars, starving their engines of oil and causing major mechanical problems. However, Toyota GB has confirmed that this issue should not affect cars coming here. We’ll be watching the situation closely. This blip on the car’s record is a shame because the rest of the GR86 feels incredibly well built.