Four-Mile Toyota GR86 Has A 2JZ Engine Under The Hood

The GR86’s owner swapped out the original four-pot for a 2JZ after just four miles of driving

03 Oct 2022

The Toyota GR86 sold out in minutes when it was released earlier this year, and most of us would love to get our hands on one. However, this GR86’s owner decided that the Japanese sports car’s original four-cylinder boxer engine wasn’t quite up to scratch and, after just four miles of driving, swapped it out in favour of an old-school 2JZ-GE unit – a bold but impressive move.

The 2JZ-powered GR86 has been built by photographer and YouTuber Larry Chen, and while the engine swap may seem controversial to some, any 2JZ swap gets a thumbs up from us. We probably would have enjoyed the GR86’s stock power unit on some twisty roads before jumping to an engine swap, though.

Four-Mile Toyota GR86 Has A 2JZ Engine Under The Hood

The car’s new powerplant is a 3.0-litre 2JZ-GE engine sourced from a Lexus IS 300, but it’s quite clearly had some work done, as it now produces around 500bhp. All that power is sent to the car’s rear wheels through a Toyota W series manual gearbox from a MkIV Supra.

From the factory, the GR86 uses a 2.4-litre naturally aspirated four-pot boxer engine, which sends a claimed 232bhp to the rear wheels through a manual transmission. It provides quite a bit more go than the 2.0-litre unit in its GT86 predecessor, but it seems that wasn’t quite enough of an increase for Chen.