Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Toyota is here with another special edition of the 86 platform with a new color, new wheels, and the same rock-solid boxer-four. The 2023 Toyota 86 Special Edition is limited to 860 units this time around and offers an attractively eye-grabbing shade of orange known as Solar Shift.
The tangerine machine also gets unique snowflake-pattern forged matte black wheels, an exclusive rear spoiler, and a Gazoo Racing catback exhaust to give the standard boxer-four a better tone. The special edition also boasts embossed GR logos in the interior and on the matte-black exhaust tips. Beyond its eye-grabbing paint and more-pronounced boxer rumble, it’s powered by the same GR86 Toyota devotees know and love, right down to the 2.4-liter boxer that spits 228 horsepower to the rear wheels.
If this whole package sounds somewhat familiar (dress up an 86 in a new color with nice wheels), well, it absolutely is for the Subaru/Toyota group project; I believe this is Toyota’s sixth special version of the platform in the United States (previous versions being the Scion FR-S Special Edition 1.0, FR-S Special Edition 2.0, GT86 Hakone Edition, GT86 TRD Special Edition, and the 860 Special Edition). Notably, this edition is missing the same thing that all the previous special variants omitted: a turbo or any extra power. Pricing is not available yet, but expect it to cost more than a standard GR86, as Toyota notes that this limited-run special is based on the top-trim Premium.
I enjoy the color combination; black-on-orange is a good mix, although it reminds me heavily of the 860 Special Edition, which also used an exclusive orange paint with black accents to distinguish it from the rest of the not-special 86’s milling around in your neighborhood. And at the end of the day, it’s still an affordable sports coupe in an unabashedly look-at-me color, so really, what’s not to love?