How Durable Are The Toyobaru Twins?

This past weekend, I was the guest of the Redline Time Attack folks at Willow Springs. I was there to drive a tuned BR-Z. On my third lap in the car, it threw a rod at about 5000rpm in fourth gear and then proceeded to, in the words of the car's owner, "saw through the block."

When the car's owner put the pictures up, noting that he had been in the car when the motor blew and that nothing unusual was happening at the time, he started hearing from other Toyobaru owners and tuners that they'd seen similar issues, often starting with a valvetrain failure. In the case of this particular car, the piston was "in a thousand pieces", so it's hard to tell if a valve dropped into it or not.

The engine's being dissected as we speak for root-cause analysis, but I wasn't cheered by the number of people who immediately stepped forward to talk about similar issues. As we stood by the smoking car after the failure, the owner started running down all the different ways in which these cars are known to blow up on-track. Apparently, the injector seals wear out, at which point the cylinder "leans" and the motor blows. Or they can have oil pressure issues. And so on.

This is a big deal because much of the GT86's appeal is based on the idea that you can enjoy it on-track for a long time with low to no running cost. If I wanted a car that might blow its engine at any time on-track, I could take my Boxster there and enjoy on-track pace that is considerably better than anything the Toyobaru can offer.

I'm going to start looking into Subaru engine failures in these cars. Once I know enough to have an informed opinion, I'll put something up on TTAC.