AE86 BEV Concept Drive Yes It s Electric but It Also Has a Manual Transmission It s a BLAST

Hi there, I'm Johnny Lieberman, you're watching Motor Trend. I'm in downtown Los Angeles in Little Tokyo with a very special Hachi Roku. It's the only one in the world like it and you'll be saying, oh yes the headlights they don't pop up. Well no, actually there was always a choice of either in Japan. You had the uh Trueno which was the pop-up lights and we got it as the Toyota Corolla GTS or you had this one the Levin which has a fixed headlight. Trueno and Levin it turns out in middle English they mean thunder and lightning but let's be honest we all like the 4age motor but it never really had any thunder or lightning. This one however has lightning because they removed that powertrain. In its place you have the electric motor from the Toyota Tundra hybrid, you have the battery pack out of the Lexus NX plug-in hybrid, and you have the transmission out of a current GR86. That means it's a six-speed manual, an EV with a manual. What's it like to drive? We're about to find out but first we're gonna drive the daddy. Look at this 1985 Toyota Corolla GTS. It's got multiple valves, it's got it's got more than one cam, it's amazing. Let's go. AE86 life. I don't know why I've always wanted to say that. Cars from 1985, they were very small, they were very light. I you know obviously I'm too fat to be sitting in this thing but it weighs 2,100 pounds. Cars aren't light anymore. Miata's the lightest one but it's got about as much power as this does. Again it's not a ton of power, I forget exactly what these are, 117 horsepower or something like that but peppy, fun. It feels like like you know when you if you take off your work boots and you put on like you know vans or something like that that's what it feels like climbing out of like a big modern car and into something like this. It's just like refreshing light feeling. What's cool about the 4A-GE motor is that it is quite torquey. You'd think you know a naturally aspirated 1.6 liter motor you know just it would just you'd have to rev it out to do anything. It's just a powerful for what it is for 40 years ago motor. Satisfying shifter, clutch is great, pedals are great. Oh you can heel and toe unlike like say a GR Corolla which I may or may not own. It's like copy these pedals what are they thinking? Haven't got to do too much steering but you know grip levels are fine and you can you can drift these pretty easily. You see a lot of stuff they they do in Japan with them on mountains. The funny part is like this this car didn't happen by accident. Similar to Toyota back I think this launched in 83. They were good at making a little sports car and then I think you know when they got away from rear drive they just got got away from it. Yeah they make the GR86 today but really super makes that and the super is BMW. Yeah I mean the GR Corolla I bought one I love it but you know it's front wheel drive base so it's really sad that Toyota got away from this and I've brought up that very point to Toyota executives before before really the GR sub-brand popped up you know they'd say like well the uh you know the Tacoma that's our sports car which is like oh please. Would be interesting to you know have a multiverse where you could find out what like the successor to this would have been. It really is a great thing just needs like a little better air conditioning. Okay now we're in the EV. This is the electric 86. Boy it feels shockingly the same even though I'm on the wrong side of the car even though there's a roll cage. This one does feel a little bit tighter and again there's a roll cage. It's been gone over by Toyota. Diamond plate flooring. Luck this was breathed on by a by a very skilled team at Lexus. It's fascinating though what they did because they put an electric motor with the manual but you know this motor on its own can spin to 20,000 rpm but they wanted to make it work with the manual so they limited it. Red line is indicated at 6,000. They took the GTS engine and they recorded it at like every single rpm you could get and then they take that sound and it's matched up to the transmission speed and their speakers um it sounds like an exhaust. They're kind of behind me. You can hear the rpms. I mean rpms really are building but you hear them through the speakers. It's the engine note. Anyways the effect is it feels and sounds just like you're driving an actual Corolla GTS. Really a sweet bit of engineering. I've long said that like fake shifts on an EV are stupid because you're adding them in where they don't belong. This you need to ship this thing because it has a actual six-speed manual transmission and um yeah it shifts great. The other difference is while I was impressed by the 85 car and how uh punchy and torquey uh that little 1.6 liter was, this is much torqueier. It's real torquey. It's a really fun thing to drive and like you know is there a market for this kind of thing? I don't know if you can build a new one. That's the problem right because because this this battery it's relatively light like this is only 2,300 pounds. The actual car from the 80s was 2,100 pounds so that's great but the trade-off is range. You only have about 60 miles of range with this thing. It's like 90 kilometers. You can swap the battery instead of charging it and it's only a level 2 charger but if you're gonna swap the battery it's something nuts like it takes 45 minutes to uh swap out the battery which is unfortunate. Yeah they could do they could do a faster swapping battery. The other thing is though um you know battery techs only only get better but is there a world like BMW for instance you know the the they've already announced it on the newer class of the new M3 you know they're gonna have a four motor electric version of it. I guess with multiple motors a manual transmission wouldn't make sense but could you do a powerful rear-drive EV a new one where you have a manual? I don't know but you know if you're in a EV rest of modding this this does oh it's a lot of fun to drive and it makes a lot of sense. All right here we go. Yeah this thing's all right and you went to why would you do this why would you take a perfectly good you know GTS motor and uh replace it well you know look you might break you might want something torquier you might be in a country or a situation where you know gas is too expensive um where you're not allowed to drive internal combustion engines won't pass smog hey guess what this passes smog because you know it's an EV. So there's lots of reasons why you would you might just be an EV enthusiast believe it or not they exist. I think I guess the big question is you know why are they doing it what are they learning from it what's their takeaway they're actually asking people like me what we think about it and we're giving them I think pretty positive feedback because this is a very cool car. Does that mean there's a future Lexus that's electric that's sporty rear drive with a manual? I don't know but they know how to do it but what a fun thing to drive and what a treat and you know I mean not just limited to Toyotas but you know there there is a world and uh you know there are cars and I was saying this with like uh you know like a Mercedes Pagoda and I'm blanking on the company that's electrifying them but like what's great about a Pagoda the way it looks how small it is it's just beautiful what's bad about an old Mercedes 280 SL the engine transmission are totally forgettable we'll rip them out put in an EV powertrain double triple the power not much more weight if in fact I think it's sometimes it's lighter once you hear it of all that gas tanks and exhaust pipes and all that stuff um and yeah look they're not long distance cars but like you know most of what you do is go to cars and coffee they're great so I do see a world where these EV resto mods are kind of a thing so to wrap it all up what do we think about Toyota's electric 86 yeah yeah it's electric what do we think about Toyota's electric 86 uh we really like it this is super fun I mean look this is so up my alley I can't even tell you the last car I bought was a you know a Toyota Corolla with a six-speed manual the car before that was an electric truck so I like EVs I like manual Toyotas this is fun I like sporty cars I would love to see this with more range but you know forget the range just plug it in I would like to see this with more power so uh this is a wonderful first start I think if they wanted to they could take this a lot further but um I think it's really cool and uh yeah you know like like most car companies I can't wait to see what they get up to next anyhow thank you so much for watching once again I'm Johnny Lieberman reporting for Motor Trend and we will catch you on the next episode.