Manual versions of the Toyota GR86 and Subaru BRZ sports cars will disappear from showrooms in 2025 if they cannot be fitted with autonomous emergency braking.
The 2023 Toyota GR86 and Subaru BRZ sports cars may lose their manual transmission options in Australia in 2025 if the companies cannot develop advanced safety technology that works with a clutch pedal.
Whereas automatic versions of the GR86 and BRZ sports-car twins are fitted with a wide suite of advanced safety aids, the manual versions miss out on nearly all of them – including autonomous emergency braking (AEB), which is fitted to most other new cars on sale in Australia.
Autonomous emergency braking (AEB) will become mandatory for all new passenger cars in Australia from March 2025 – placing the future of the manual Toyota and Subaru twins in doubt, if they cannot be fitted with the technology.
When asked at the launch of the Toyota GR86 this week if there are any plans to add AEB for manual versions, Toyota Australia sales and marketing boss Sean Hanley told Drive: “That’s certainly something we wouldn’t rule out in future development.”
The GR86 and BRZ’s advanced safety suite was provided by Subaru, under its EyeSight brand – but as with the new WRX sports sedan, the Japanese car maker is yet to develop an autonomous emergency braking system which can work with a manual transmission.
Toyota’s other manual performance cars – the GR Supra, GR Yaris and GR Corolla – are equipped with AEB, as their safety packages were developed in-house by Toyota, or its Supra joint-venture partner, BMW.
The boss of Subaru Australia told Drive in June: “We are working really closely with the Subaru engineering team on EyeSight as our technology … is currently not on manual variants.
“We are working on bringing [AEB] onto manual variants. We’re just not in a position to do that just yet.
“From a Subaru Australian perspective, we would like to see it as soon as possible and it’s something that we work really closely with Subaru Corporation on, and something that’s definitely on our radar to get to market as soon as possible. [Subaru Japan] has been very supportive and working to make it happen for us.”
If Subaru and Toyota cannot develop an AEB system for their twinned sports cars, they will no longer be able to earn compliance with Australian Design Rules – the regulations all new cars must meet – after 1 March 2025.
Examples can still be sold after this date, as long as they are granted compliance with Australian Design Rules (ADRs) before the deadline.
A similar issue is facing the Toyota GR86 in Europe, where it will be pulled from sale in July 2024 as it cannot be fitted with traffic sign recognition (used for a speed limiter) and emergency lane-keeping assist, which will become mandatory.
While lane-keep assist is not yet mandatory in Australia, there is an ongoing proposal for that to change for newly-introduced cars from 1 March 2024, and all new passenger cars from 1 March 2026.
If this legislation is passed, all variants of the Toyota GR86 and Subaru BRZ – auto and manual – would no longer be able to pass Australian Design Rules after March 2026, equating to a life cycle of only three and a half, to four years.
“We would have to raise the roof and move the windscreen to accommodate the camera,” said Toyota Europe, in a comment published by the UK’s Autocar.
Without autonomous emergency braking, the manual Toyota GR86 and Subaru BRZ cannot earn a five-star safety rating from ANCAP – as AEB performance accounts for 38 per cent of the Safety Assist category, and a 70 per cent overall score is needed in this criteria to receive a five-star overall rating.
“It’s disappointing to see certain variants brought into the market so close to the regulatory requirement for models to be fitted with AEB,” ANCAP CEO Carla Hoorweg said in a statement to Drive.
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