The Toyota GR86 and Subaru BRZ may be exceedingly similar rear-wheel-drive sports cars developed together and built at the same assembly plant, but they are not identical. As we detailed last year, those construction and tuning differences make the GT86 a little more tail-happy on a track and the BRZ a little more stable. Now, Car and Driver's Dan Edmunds has a detailed breakdown of what those differences look like on the cars.
While much of that difference comes from damper tuning and different stabilizer bars, the actual suspension setup is slightly different on both cars, too. Up front, the Toyota has an iron alloy knuckle that weighs a few pounds more than the aluminum part in the Subaru and a hollow stabilizer bar. In the rear, the difference is the way the sway bar is mounted, with the Toyota opting to mount the bar to the subframe while Subaru chooses to mount it to the unibody directly.
The differences are very minor, but they add up to a BRZ that Edmunds finds to be slightly more comfortable and usable around town without losing anything in performance driving situations. While both the differences in how the cars drive and the suspension setups themselves are small, the BRZ remains a little more stable and the GR86 remains a little more wild.
