Are people starting to get nostalgic about Scions? The original FR-S was a revelation, a lightweight FR sports coupe at a time when the segment seemed almost extinct. It’s no wonder it became a tuner favorite. Toyota’s Scion brand is no longer with us, but an entire generation of car enthusiasts came of age with the marque’s mod-friendly business model. For 2026, Toyota is returning to those heady days by releasing a GR86 Yuzu Edition.
A hallmark of the Scion brand was its Release Series, limited edition models that appeared about once a year, usually with special paint and sometimes unique body kits. The first FR-S to undergo this treatment was the Scion FR-S Release Series 1.0, which debuted at the 2014 New York Auto Show. It was finished in an exclusive Yuzu (meaning “citrus” in Japanese) Yellow paint and TRD body kit, suspension, and quad-tip exhaust. It was limited to 1500 units.
The 2026 GR86 Yuzu Edition throws back to the Release 1.0 with the same Yuzu Yellow paint paired with black wheels. It also features optional front lip, side skirts, and rear body kit. A quad-tip exhaust is also available, but branded GR to reflect the rise of Akio Toyoda’s sports division as TRD in the US focuses more on off-road equipment.
The Yuzu Edition is based on the GR86 Premium with Performance Package, so it comes with Sachs dampers and Brembo brakes. The black leather and Alcantara interior is spruced up nicely with yellow stitching on the door cards, seats, steering wheel, handbrake, and shift boot. Yellow perforations in the seats provide a particularly nice contrast effect.
Like the Release Series cars, there are no upgrades to the engine or transmission. The 2.4-liter Subaru boxer still generates 228 horsepower and 184 lb.-ft of torque. Combined with a curb weight of just a hair over 2800 pounds — an amazing feat for any car this day and age — Toyota says it slings from 0-60 in 6.1 seconds.
Pricing for the Yuzu Edition has not been announced yet, and it is expected to arrive in showrooms later this year. Unlike the Release Series 1.0, there will only be 860 Yuzu Editions made. Each one will come with a plate, though non-serialized, affixed to the side of the dashboard denoting as such, visible only when the door is open.
Though Scion is long gone the FR sports coupe that the world desperately needs soldiers on. It’s gone through three name changes — Scion FR-S, Toyota 86, GR86 — but its spirit has remained respectably consistent. It’s still a tossable, lightweight RWD car in an age of ever-bigger cars. That’s a formula that never gets old, but do people long for the days of a corporate-supported tuner scene like Scion? For those feeling wistful about its origins, they might consider giving this Yuzu a squeeze.
I think Scion would have been marked as one of Toyota’s (biggest) mistakes, along with its 1995-1997 (only a half of the latter due to introduction of the Corolla WRC that only ran until 1999) World Rally Championship absence over the turbo restrictor found in the Celica (ST205 / T20) and even the 2009-2010 product recalls (which happened after the 2007-2008 global financial crisis), mainly its not because of the fact that Toyota established Scion at that time when the carmaker was already out of WRC in favor of racing in Formula One (F1) until 2009 – the result was because Scion (hence the name) was aimed towards younger audiences / buyers – but also one of the reasons for Scion’s discontination was because older audiences / buyers matters, and as Scion (as I say that its much of a fatal mistake by Toyota along with its pre-2017 WRC roles and ’09-’10 product recalls together with the 2011 Tohoku tsunami) was not even marketed outside North America (unlike Lexus) then Toyota today (in light of Trump’s recent tarrifs introduction) may have fight back with its memory of creating Scion for something it would have been a best-kept secret or even whatever it may take(s).
As while Toyota have went on to erase Scion – at that time when the former already owns Subaru (since 2005) – in favor of (Toyota) acquiring shares (but only at a minimum) in Mazda (2017), Suzuki (2019) and Isuzu (2021), it instead continued to possess the reputation of Toyota vehicles for being seen as bland, boring and thus less fun to drive (yet uninteresting) – as shown by when talking to Europeans (British, Irish, Maltese and Cypriot included) about Toyotas. And as this article explains about the 86 means that Scion’s ghosts being ridden there just as with the suggestion that the 86 (GR86) is one lightweight rear-wheel driven sports car that’s still on production today, along with fellow compatriot and corporate partner Mazda through the MX-5 / Miata – I can’t ignore the Alpine A110 but although its mid-engined and rear-wheel driven then the A110 (as given the parts too) is essentially a front-wheel drive car that was converted into an RWD sports car. (As James May from Top Gear even expressed positivity to the A110 as it was the greatest thing coming from France since the Mouli cheese grater, but when it appeared on Top Gear also in 2018 meant the A110 caught fire due to a fuel failure.)
I think since the 86 (known as BRZ to Subaru) had connections with Subie, and the latter was part of Nissan before Renault took it over in 1999 (because it was Subaru that held responsibility for introducing Renault to Nissan since the Gallic carmaker wanted to use Scooby’s parts bin too), then I think Toyota would even have a word with even Renault Group and Stellantis (formerly PSA Peugeot Citroen and Fiat SpA) – as well as Honda for protection – to redevelop an 86 and MR2 with the same sizes as theirs when they were in production and on sale… (Like I suggest that it would have use the A110 as a base with a Frankensteined boxer engine from Alfa Romeo’s archives being shoehorned on and as well as having it mated with transmissions from the same Alpine…)