Subaru has promised it would bring us a next-generation Subaru BRZ, and Toyota denied rumors that the Toyota 86 would get axed, so that only leaves one question: will the next-generation sports cars get more power? The answer may thankfully, finally be yes.
Take it with an under-powered grain of salt, but Japan’s Best Car is reporting that the next-gen cars, or at least the next BRZ, will upgrade from its current 205 horsepower 2.0-liter naturally aspirated boxer four-cylinder engine to the 2.4-liter four-cylinder found in the Subaru Ascent crossover.
That engine, coded FA24, comes turbocharged in the Ascent and makes 260 hp and 277 lb-ft of torque, those those figures could be fairly different if you plop that engine in a tiny little sports car instead of a big beefy crossover.
Of course, as The Drive speculated in its pickup of the Best Car report, it’s possible Subaru could remove the turbo from the FA24 engine (please god no), which would dramatically cut back the power but probably still leave it comfortably more powerful than the current boxer.
The only way I see this happening is if the company is strict on not turbocharging the car, because then why wouldn’t they just throw a turbo on the current Boxer for the next-gen and fiddle with the packaging? Who knows.
As with most Japanese car magazines, be skeptical about this one—if they were all true we’d be on probably our second refresh of the Mazda RX-9 by now—but this rumor makes a lot of sense.
There’s no clear timeline for when the next BRZ, and possibly the next 86, should the two automakers continue the partnership of making the same car and not going their own way, should arrive. The current cars showed up eight years ago though, so hopefully something new is coming soon.