Feature: Ice drifting in the Toyota 86

If you ask 100 enthusiasts if there is anything wrong with the Toyota 86, 99 might tell you it lacks power. But that’s the last thing on my mind as the compact coupe’s tacho shoots clockwise, its engine rapping on the rev limiter as the Toyota struggles for traction in fourth gear.

Keen to remind us of the genius inside the 86 before its new Supra was confirmed at the 2018 Geneva motor show, Toyota hatched a plan to take a handful of journalists to Sweden and reacquaint ourselves with the machine before meeting its creator.

Arriving at our frozen lake mid morning, an arduous near-60 hour journey from Sydney to the ski village of Åresjön suddenly feels worthwhile.

Framed by rugged forest on one side and a postcard-pretty township on the other, the lake is coated in a fine layer of powder augmented by deep snow banks bordering racetrack-like routes plowed onto frozen water.

The Aussie group is a little hesitant to head out onto the ice until our hosts reassure us the surface is almost a metre thick, and that you only need 10 centimetres of depth to drive a tank across it.

We start the day with familiarisation exercises in the Toyota Yaris GRMN, a supercharged version of Toyota’s city car built in small numbers for European rally fans. It’s a fun way to get to grips with the lack of friction offered here, where every manoeuvre requires more real estate than you expect.

Acceleration is a frustrating exercise in wheelspin management, braking requires more time, forethought and commitment than anything you’ll find on Married at First Sight, and careless steering input will give you time to reflect on poor life choices while helplessly heading toward a snowbank.

We practice with a swerve-and-avoid exercise at 70km/h or so, slamming on the brakes and swerving to the left to avoid plastic markers representing an elk, then back to the right to rejoin the correct side of the “road”.

I barely scrape through with lurid oversteer, using plenty of throttle to pull the wayward hatch into line and escape a head-on crash with farmer Sven’s imaginary tractor.

Our instructor for the day tells me to have another crack, taking the Yaris by the scruff of the neck with much more aggressive braking and steering inputs. What’s lost in translation is that I already asked the Yaris’ electronic stability control systems to take a break.

Arriving with plenty of speed on board, I slam on the brakes and haul left on the steering wheel to miss the moose, then throw right-hand lock to make it back to my side of the road. The result looks like a bad stunt driver’s Scandanavian flick, the Yaris spearing through the rear end of the exercise area. Backwards.

Having (in no way) mastered ice driving in friendly front-wheel-drive hatchbacks, we graduate to the rear-wheel-drive Toyota 86 for an afternoon of sideways shenanigans.

There nearest Ikea is nearly 300 kilometres from Åresjön, but a handful of local adults, kids and dogs gather to browse a uniquely Australian pop-up store likely to feature such favourites as Senndit, Nö-tålent and Muchkråshen. Bring your own Allen keys, we’ll need them to put Numpty Dumpty’s car together again.

But it doesn’t go down like that.

Taking to a short course shaped like a peanut or acoustic guitar, we all have a spin or two before getting the hang of hanging the tail out. The car’s extraordinary balance and responsiveness is magnified by the ice, feeling more stable and predictable than a Yaris which – in theory - should have been more approachable.

It isn’t long before we’re going sideways at every turn, keeping the Toyotas on the edge of adhesion in one of the most addictive driving experiences I’ve encountered.

Writing for Drive has put me behind the wheel of sensational cars in exotic environments around the world at ludicrous speeds, and working to link every corner of an ice track with oversteer in a budget Toyota at 50km/h ranks among the best of them.

It’s also an excellent showcase of the 86’s character – the responsive and communicative steering, linear throttle response and inherent balance of the affordable sports car.

Second gear is just fine for 90 per cent of what we get up to – even starting the car. I progress from simple corner-exit oversteer to feint drifting in a matter of hours, applying a dab of steering and burst of throttle to send the car sliding the wrong way ahead of a corner before using the pendulum effect to send it back the other way with indulgent slides lasting several seconds or more.

The learning process is not particularly pretty to watch, and I can’t claim to be any kind of drift king or ice-driving lord. But it is a hilarious and illuminating way to learn vehicle dynamics and cut to the true character of the car.

We sit down with Toyota 86 and Supra chief engineer Tetsuya Tada in Geneva two days later. Tada-san talks about how “literally millions” of people have asked him to beef up the brand’s junior sports car, giving it a turbocharged engine while boosting grip to make it competitive with faster rivals.

That car is coming. It’s called the Supra.

But the 86 is likely to stay light and simple for the foreseeable future – Tada is adamant a switch to turbocharging would force him to tear up all work on the current car and start from a clean sheet with a machine that would be heavier, more expensive and less agile than the current model.

Go ahead and ask those 100 car-loving folks what they think of Toyota’s 86. I know where you will find at least one who knows the coupe is just fine the way it is.

Do it yourself

The Toyota 86 ice driving experience is managed by Toyota Sweden.

Open to the public every Saturday between January and March, the experience costs 2,950 Swedish Kroner ($455) per person for 90 minutes of driving. Group bookings are cheaper, and can be made mid-week.

Full details: Toyota.se.

Photos: Jonas Kullman for Toyota Sweden, James Want for The Versatile Gent, Toyota Australia.