This 300bhp Supercharged Toyota GT86 Is A Brilliantly Subtle Sleeper

After Toyota revealed a trio of Le Mans livery-inspired GT86s earlier this week, one of which found its way to CT Towers ahead of this weekend’s Le Mans action, it put us in an eighty-sixy kind of mood.

To the classifieds we went, and just look what we found: an almost completely standard-looking GT86 complete with a 300bhp supercharger upgrade. It’s a high-spec car so you get navigation and heated seats, for example, not to mention one of the sweetest gearboxes around.

We love the fact that this sub-50,000-mile 2012 car is such a sleeper, despite boasting about 50 per cent more power than standard. In silver, no one would look twice.

That is, until they saw the front brakes. Inside the factory-fit 17-inch front wheels sit beefy AP Racing stoppers wrapped around grooved discs. The striking yellow logos on the black calipers hint that this might not be any old GT86 after all.

The supercharger kit is designed to look and operate like it was fitted by Toyota. The £6000-ish kit from Harrop, built around an Eaton TVS 1320 supercharger, is bolstered by a stronger clutch and a HKS oil cooler, so it should work like a dream. With over £9000 apparently spent on parts, you’d damn well hope so.

Harrop’s own technical data suggests that this car should deliver 244bhp and 196lb ft at the wheels, so the seller’s guess at 300bhp or so at the crank is probably fair. We’ve seen the standard car return between 160-170bhp at the wheels on different dynos.

Could this be the perfect GT86? Not too showy, but with all the performance you could wish for? With such an effective supercharger setup on top of the standard spec, it just might be.

It’s for sale with Bell & Colvill in West Horsley, Surrey; a dealer that seems to specialise in interesting cars including Lotus, Morgan and Subaru. The price is still £14,995, but for this car withy these mods? That’s a stone-cold bargain.