Toyota FT-86 G Sports Concept

THE DRIVING force behind Toyota’s aggressive Salon stable is Akio Toyoda, the company’s new petrolhead CEO.

He’s kick-started a campaign to build “more interesting cars” (Aussie translation: “a lot of our cars are automotive Valium. I’m going to sort that right out”).

Cue the FT-86 G Sports Concept, the latest and hardest version of the new rear-drive coupe, best known as the ‘Toyobaru’ (because Toyota and Subaru are cooking it up together, based on the Impreza platform and powered by Subie’s flat-four engine).

In the metal, this coupe looks taut and tough: sharp flanks, chiselled, shark-like nose, matt-black bonnet and sexy new wheels.

Okay, so the spoiler is straight out of Japan’s D1 Drift series, but that’s pretty much the point here.

On the grunt front, the Toyobaru’s 2.0-litre Subaru Boxer four has gained a turbo, for outputs of approximately 200kW/340Nm and guaranteed sideways shenanigans…