The Shocking Differences Between the 2022 Subaru BRZ and 2022 Toyota GR86

I'm Dan Edmonds and this is the 2022 Subaru BRZ. It's the second generation of this vehicle and today I've got it up here on Glendora Ridge Road and this is the Toyota GR86, which as you can see I brought out to Glendora Ridge Road later in the same day. I'm going to be looking at the suspension of this vehicle and the Toyota GR86. They should be pretty similar based on the looks and price and the equipment and the fact that they're made on the same assembly line and share an engine and all sorts of other parts, but they don't drive exactly the same and I'm told there's some differences that are a little bit more than the usual tuning differences, so I'm going to be looking for that. I'm going to be taking the wheels off this once I get done here and take it home and I'll do the same with the Toyota GR86 and we'll see once and for all if the differences are really more significant than mere tuning or not. Time for me to get this on the road, get it home, get it up on jacks and see what we're dealing with under there. While I take the front wheel off, let's go over the differences I've noticed. The two are actually quite similar at the limit, like if you're pushing hard on a mountain road or lapping a racetrack, but the cars ride and feel very different at lower speeds around town or when you're not pushing that hard. The Toyota is significantly firmer, especially in the rear, to the point where I got tired of the ride quality. The BRZ felt more supple and compliant and I preferred driving it when I wasn't at maximum attack, but also it did quite well when I pushed hard. Let's take a look at why that might be. All right, so we're looking at the front end of the Toyota GR86, but you wouldn't know it because the Subaru BRZ looks almost identical from this view. In fact, it even says Subaru on the damper right here. Anyhow, what we're looking at is a strut front suspension. There's the coil over strut, we've got a two-piston sliding caliper brake, and I can see a lower control arm. It's an L-shaped lower control arm with the L pointing forward, so that means the ride bushing is up front and the handling bushing is in the back, pretty much in line with the hub center. This is, in fact, the GR86, even though we see Subaru stamped into the two-piston sliding brake calipers. How do two-piston sliding brake calipers work? Well, the pistons are on this side. This is just fixed, but there's pins here on which this piece can move and this frame is rigidly bolted to the hub, so it's kind of like putting your hand here and then the fingers of the pistons and you pull like that. That is going to basically clamp both sides of the rotor the same way, but the action is only on this side. The really major visible difference between the BRZ and the GR86, there's lots of hidden ones, like the spring is a different spring right here in the Toyota than it is in the Subaru. The internal valving of this strut are also different. The stabilizer bar diameters are a little bit different, and so yeah, you expect tuning differences if the two companies are trying to go down slightly different paths, but one of the differences I didn't expect is they don't even share this knuckle, because this one is an iron alloy and the one on the BRZ is an aluminum alloy, so Subaru was willing to pay a little bit more to go for less unsprung weight. This stabilizer bar on the Toyota, which we're looking at now, is solid and 18 millimeters in diameter. In the BRZ, it's hollow and I think it's 18.3 or 18.4 millimeters in diameter. Now, that doesn't sound like much, but roll stiffness is proportional to that number raised to the fourth power, which gets pretty big in a hurry. Now, it all depends on what the wall thickness is, but again, Subaru seems to be willing to spend a little bit more money to save a little weight. I was able to get the detailed bar dimensions from Subaru, and after doing the math, the difference is the Subaru has a 2.3 percent stiffer front bar than the GR86, and when we look at the differences in the rear anti-roll bar, we get a better picture of their contributions to the overall handling balance of each car. Well, here's the rear suspension of the Toyota GR86, and it looks largely identical to the BRZ, but largely identical omits one big difference, which we'll get to in a moment. Toyota has been calling this rear suspension on a variety of its cars double wishbone for some time, but you shouldn't buy into that because it's just not. It is a Multilink. Now, there are a lot of different flavors of Multilink, and I get the idea what they're trying to do, but it's just not right. There is a wishbone or a control arm, as we like to call it, here on the top, but on the bottom, there's a pair of links plus a tow link, so there's multiple links. It does not have two control arms, two wishbones, just one. So, here is the upper control arm, a.k.a. upper wishbone, and it's a pretty classic A shape. Here's the ball joint here on the outside, and there are two pivots inside, high up on the subframe. Here down below, we have not another control arm, but two discrete links. This one here, which angles slightly forward, and this large one here, which goes more or less directly towards the inside of the car. So, yeah, not a control arm, not a second wishbone, but two links. Unlike the front, where we saw that the BRZ uses aluminum for its hub carrier or knuckle, and the Toyota uses iron alloy, in this case, it's the same part. There's no aluminum in this particular piece on the BRZ. That's not the big difference in the back of this car. The BRZ and GR86 have different suspension tuning, and what that means is their spring rates, front and rear, are different. The damping characteristics, as determined by the valving inside the shocks and front struts, are different, and the stabilizer bars are different. In fact, here in the back, this stabilizer bar on the GR86 is one millimeter bigger than the one on the BRZ. The BRZ has a softer rear anti-roll bar than the GR86. Combine that with stiffer front spring rates and softer rear spring rates, and you have suspension tuning that promotes understeer stability versus the GR86, which is a little bit more tail-happy. Now we come to the really big difference between the GR86 and the Subaru BRZ, and it might even be more significant than the new knuckle up front. Not necessarily in terms of end result, but certainly the trouble that they went to to pull it off. If you can tell, it's a little tough, but this is the subframe, this piece right here of the rear suspension, and the stabilizer bar mounting bracket basically is welded to the subframe right here. You can see the weld, and then, of course, this is where the actual bushing is on this part of the bracket. Now, if we were looking at a BRZ, we wouldn't see this bracket attached to the subframe. No. The BRZ attaches it to this washer here, and this washer is essentially, through this bolt, part of the chassis. So this one is rubber isolated through this bushing here, this subframe bushing, and the BRZ, because it's mounted to the washer, which is bolted directly to the chassis, is not isolated by the bushing. It is, for all intents and purposes, connected directly to the chassis. What really astounds me here is the BRZ and the GR86 have to have completely different subframes. That's a really big cost to incur, basically because they have a different opinion on how the stabilizer bar should be mounted. Rubber mounted directly to the subframe, so it's all kind of together, all the suspension members work on the same subframe, or in Subaru's case, where it's here, where it's direct mounted to the chassis, which means it's not necessarily in lockstep with the rest of the subframe. Having two different subframes may sound like it adds complexity to the production process, and while there is a little bit of that, you have to keep in mind that the BRZ and GR86 are built on the same assembly line as the Subaru WRX and Crosstrek. So having two subframes isn't all that different when you're talking about an assembly line that builds multiple car models anyway. So here in the back is another sliding caliper. This one's only got one piston, single piston, which is fine for a rear brake, and a ventilated rotor, which is nice to see, because if you push this car hard, brakes can work a little bit, as I found yesterday. But you can see the hat section here is nice and square, and what that tells me, along with this little cap, is that there is a pair of brake shoes in here for the parking brake, which is actuated via this cable and the center pull handbrake, which is really nice to have on a car like this. This particular GR86 has the smaller wheel and tire package. Let's see how much they weigh. 43 pounds. That's interesting, because the 18-inch package, when I measured it, measured 42 pounds, and you don't always see larger wheels weighing less. And we're done. This wraps up the deep dive of the Toyota GR86 and the Subaru BRZ. These two vehicles are built on the same assembly line, same engine, same tires, same suspension pickup points, different suspension tuning. But, you know, we expected that. What I didn't expect is there'd be some significant differences that add up to some real cost in the front and the rear of these two cars. You know, it's a lot cheaper to just make them the same and just live with your suspension tuning differences and make that how you differentiate them. But they took that a further here, which is interesting. Now, at the track and when you push really hard on a mountain road like I have, it kind of adds up to the same basic feel. But around town, there are definitely differences. And I think, you know, I came into this on the team GR86 because I like the way it looks up front a little better. But after driving them both, at least the daily drive livability, that leans towards the BRZ for me because it's just a little bit more supple around town and it doesn't lose anything up in the mountains. You know, the Toyota, on the other hand, feels like it's tuned more sporty in everyday driving situations. And, you know, I think for me, what I'm feeling is more rebound damping that kind of sucks the car down to the ground to the point where you kind of feel all the imperfections more than you do in the BRZ, which seems to breathe just a little bit better. Anyhow, that's what I think. Let me know what you think in the comments below. And as ever, this is Dan Edmonds saying thanks for watching. I know what you've all been thinking with just one jack stand up there. Is this thing all twisted up so the door won't open? Well, let's find out. Not even a little bit. It's like it's sitting on the ground with all four tires on the car. This is one torsionally stiff body structure.