This Video Proves You Can Live In A New Toyota GR86

Recent years have seen a rise in the #VanLife trend, with people living off the grid in spacious vans they’ve converted into snazzy homes from home, but you can’t do the same in a tiny sports car, surely? A video has blown up on Reddit in which a YouTube user documents his life sleeping, living and even cooking in a brand-new Toyota GR86. So the old adage is true – you can live in your car, but you can’t drive your house.

The YouTube user’s channel is called Koooo Drive & Camp and at the time of writing he has five video uploads, with his most popular video entitled ‘(Second Night) Spending the night in my sports car in the rain by the coast’ – not a particularly catchy title, but probably much snappier in the original Japanese.

In the video, the YouTuber known as Koooo films himself parking up by the sea in his GR86 and sets it up for camping by sliding the front seats as far forward as possible and folding the rear seats down – while the car was not designed for someone to live in, there’s a surprising amount of space given that the rear seats leave a flat loading floor to lay a sleeping bag over.

Koooo even made some black out blinds that fit onto the side windows for extra privacy. He starts preparing a meal of udon noodles inside the car on a small camping table with a mini burner. While we admire the dedication, we’re not sure we’d want an open flame roaring inside a brand new sports car – we’d stick to the McDonald’s drive thru.

In Koooo’s other videos he does pretty much the same thing but at other cool locations he visits in his car, such as an abandoned theme park. He never speaks in his videos, and instead narrates with the use of subtitles.

Yes, it’s pretty bizarre, but Koooo’s videos camping in the rain in his GR86 are like a form of car-themed ASMR. If you’re new to the ASMR trend, it’s a style of video popular on video sharing sites designed to help you relax and can be as simple as a YouTuber eating on camera (known as mukbang), whispering or making other gentle noises to provoke a tingling sensation over the viewer’s body.

In all seriousness, while Koooo appears to be living in his car for fun while travelling around Japan, the video does make you wonder how realistic it would be in the long term. Homelessness is still a big problem in the UK, and a report from homelessness charity Crisis back in 2018 estimated that around 12,000 people were living in their cars due to a lack of affordable housing. YouTube channel Donut Media even made a video to raise awareness of this issue in the US, with host Nolan Sykes challenging himself to live in his Ford Mustang for a week.