2013 Toyota 86: Clever Vs Dumb
Two very clever storage solutions, and one very dumb one
By Imthishan Giado
Buying a small 2+2 sports car doesn’t have to mean you have to give up all semblance of practicality. For a car that can double up as a track toy, this 86 is completely up to date in how it keeps finding spaces for odds and ends. Above for instance, the centre console features a (removable) tray that can store two 1L water bottles as well as your new smartphone.
Underneath the HVAC system in the main dash, there’s a perfectly-sized recess which will accept anything from an iPhone to a new Samsung Galaxy S3. The more anorak-y among you will also know that in the full-spec car, this cubby is smaller on account of the start/stop button which lives down here.
And what if you have a vampire’s thirst for water, where two 1-litre bottles won’t do?
Still covered – there’s a door pocket which will hold a 2-litre bottle, although it usually holds my wallet.
With all these clever little spaces, there’s only one thing which strikes me as inexplicably dumb.
The actual boot, which has a whopping-great full-size steel wheel spare sticking out of the floor. The boot’s not too tiny (especially with the rear seats folded) but this wheel just kills any utility.
At the risk of being stranded when I get a flat, it has to go.
Read more here!
That’ll be the ‘cleverness’ of GCC specs that leaves you with a full size spare, my man! Interestingly, my rental in the UK (a rather spiffing SEAT Ibiza) came with a get-you-home spray can despite the wheel well being big enough to hold a full-size spare. It seems that renting motors to Pikeys who knock off the spares, or swop all the wheels and tyres on to their own cars, is getting to be a costly business!
Who is that lady in the white bikini in the iPhone 🙂
[Imthishan] @Fraser: Or perhaps they don’t trust Scotsmen…
@Sultan: ….no comment!
I know that spare wheel can be quite an inconvenience but I wouldn’t consider it a deal breaker. On the topic of the 86 as a whole, I have to say, I’m sure people who blew all their money on the Zelas as soon as it arrived here are now wishing they had eaten their hearts out before the 86 went on sale, instead of how they’re doing the same thing right now. Come on. Is it better to buy a box with a powertrain pulled out of a Camry for AED95000 or to exercise some patience and, after a while, buy a genuine rear-wheel drive sportscar which was in development for years, has endless modification potential, is the spiritual successor of a legend, has kick-started a long anticipated trend on the automotive landscape, is currently the talk of the town and comes for around the same price of AED95000 from the same trusted brand? I think we all know the answer to that question!