nerdstrike

Keep an eye on the E numbers. Esso supreme+ sometimes has ethanol in it depending on how far you are from London.

I think a car receives the highest praise when you come away wanting to see what more it can do besides pile on speed.

There's always the lead-based-elephant in the room, which is to unwire the battery until you need it. You have to put up with some lost trims and settings, but it will last until you need it. Another thing you can do (albeit with insurance connotations) is leave the car in a secure place with the doors unlocked. That way the alarm would never arm.

You must have liked the 86, you kept it for quite a while! May your next car be as good.

For those of us without a homologation special on pre-order, Jonny Smith's review of it is very detailed:

The dipstick tube has a twist in it, and the stick won't slide in in all orientations. It might be that simple. I hope your engine isn't in big trouble. Depending on the age of the car, you should check whether you're still under the five year warranty.

I'm not sure I'd want to change a coilpack at the roadside. If had exactly the right ratchets, maybe but I'd absolutely drop the damn bolt into the undertray.

I'm glad your engine is back together. I suppose an unexpected failure is inevitable eventually at twice design power, even with posh rods. Let's hope you have smooth running!

I got one of these into an RX8 once without compromising seating or using the ski-hatch, so I know what I'm talking about! 55" TV, new toilet, £1200 of paint, all went in the '86 (not at the same time!). Quite a list of quietly surprised retailers in my wake.

Don't sweat it Tom! The '86 is a very practical and sensible sports car.

I wasn't this excited about my wife's Yaris

A prefecture is a bit like a county, or perhaps the City of London, in that it has quite a lot of local governance ("office of the prefect"), but defers to the elected national government. In the UK we're accustomed to factories and shipyards and whatnot being associated with cities rather than counties, but I believe (perhaps wrongly) that the Japanese have more regional pride than the Brits.

Check the filler cap is done up properly. Trust a main dealer to do stuff like not reinstalling the dip stick... Also look for where the pressure release is on the expansion chamber, as that is where a boil-up will tend to spray from. If the spray is in other areas where it is unlikely to have gone, then you want to look at hoses I suppose. More likely than one your heads blowing anyway.

There's also the ticking of the boot shelf metal sheets sticking and hopping over each other as the car receives torsion. There's a BRZ advisory document for that, although I wasn't terribly successful trying to implement it. Don't know if bunging cloth up there would help.

So many beeps, so little time. We could probably write a FAQ for them all.

Is this after you close the lid? The '86 has a pretty fragile sense of whether it's secure, but also tries to tell whether there's a key inside the car as it locks. The prime candidate for beep-beep is a lightly bent switch bracket that sticks up near the brake master cylinder. It gets bent when someone leans across it because it's made very thinly. I've not got a clear idea yet, but I think for some people the car believes the key is in the boot based on where the owner holds the key when they close the boot, but it might also be a second key close at hand, such as in a partner's pockets.

Say no more! I once knew of a 200sx that died after an inconvenient surge of boost. I also repeatedly overtook a Tuscan on a track day because he liked to pirouette

You've never respected a cold greasy roundabout as much as on primacy tyres in a tail-happy RWD car. Otherwise it's super fun even in the wet! See you on the A428 no doubt.

Paging @Test Drives Unlimited ! I thought I recalled you doing something like this.

It'll be a while yet before the GR86 with the larger engine makes it to market, and there really aren't many things wrong with most of the used options apart from wear and tear, so you could save £10-15k just blow a few grand on tuition and events so you really get the most out of the car. If I had to buy new, I'd aim for the blue specials just for the kicks, or grub around for an aero edition from a few years back.

Damn, depression is no joke

Pah. I average 35 mpg on the commute and 40-ish on holiday with a manual gearbox. I don't really get a chance to exercise the car on the commute due to the roads and traffic, but it's offset by quite a lot of crawl. I could see it dropping a lot if you live in the middle of a city and never get out of 3rd, but that's true of most non-hybrids.

Congratulations from Cambourne. Also tune in to Mighty Car Mods for a demonstration of fairly ham-fisted driving and removing and refitting the undertray continuously! I love those Aussie pillocks, and they're working on a car I own for once.

The renders invoke the Hyundai Coupe S3, and not in a particularly good way. I suppose Subaru will be happy if they don't have to retool the production line entirely for the GR. Maybe they'll manage to sort out the cold gear shifts this time around?

Super bold colour choice, but great result!