Subaru and Toyota have unveiled a new ‘Cup Car Basic’ variant for their BRZ/GR86 coupe in Japan, and as the name suggests, is a stripped, no-frills race car that’s meant for the track – more specifically, for the Toyota Gazoo Racing GR86/BRZ Cup that will kick off later this year.
How “no-frills”, you ask? Well, how does 16-inch steelies wheels on a Hachiroku sound? As cool as that looks though, we’re sure those that actually buy the Cup Car Basic for racing will swap them out for grippier tyres and lighter wheels right away.
Steelies aside, the Toyo-baru Cup Car Basic actually comes with a handful of tweaks and upgrades to make it more “race ready” than the standard car. These include a six-point roll cage with eyesbolts to affix a six-point harness for the driver seat.
The roll cage also comes with sidebars for additional side impact protection, but that unfortunately means that the seat and curtain airbags must be taken out. Not to worry, though, as race car drivers call that “weight saving”. The floor carpets also get additional cutouts to accommodate the cage mounting points, though again, racers will just toss them out.
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Underneath the bonnet, the main change comes in the form of a new oil cooler to handle the extra heat around the race track, while the limited-slip differential also gets a new housing with additional cooling fins.
Aside from that, though, the rest of the mechanicals remain identical to the standard car, including the 2.4-litre naturally-aspirated flat-four engine that makes 235 hp and 250 Nm, alongside the six-speed manual transmission.
The Subaru BRZ Cup Car Basic is priced at JPY3,338,500 (approx. RM121k), while the Toyota GR86 counterpart is slightly cheaper at JPY3,334,000. The Toyota Gazoo Racing GR86/BRZ Cup single-make series will begin on the 16th of July, with its first round held at the Fuji Speedway circuit.
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