Toyota 86 review: Bahrain's last affordable rear-wheel-drive Toyota
4/5motorssouq Editorial Team
Buy the 86 for the way it drives, not for what it does for you day to day, because it does very little: two usable seats, a boot for a weekend bag, and a ride that transmits every speed bump on the causeway approach roads. What it gives back is steering feel and a chassis balance nothing else near its used price in Bahrain can match. Check the clutch and any track-day history before you sign, and budget for tyres — this car eats a cheap set within a year of enthusiastic ownership.
Pros
- Chassis balance and steering feel nothing else near its used price in Bahrain matches
- FA20 flat-four is mechanically simple and well understood by independent workshops
- Small, enthusiast-only used market means fewer abused examples
- Rear-wheel-drive manual coupe is now essentially extinct from Toyota's GCC lineup
Cons
- Rear seats and boot are token-sized; this is a second car, not a family's only one
- Ride quality suffers badly on Manama's patched streets and speed bumps
- Clutch and tyre wear both track hard with how enthusiastically it was driven
- Thin resale pool means it can sit on the market longer than a mainstream coupe
Toyota never sold the 86 in real volume in Bahrain, and it shows in the used listings: most cars on the market today were bought by people who wanted this exact car, not by someone who needed a compact coupe and happened to end up here. That skews the pool toward better-kept examples, but it also means fewer cars to choose from and less room to be picky about colour or grade.
What it is like to drive here
The flat-four is not quick by turbocharged-rival standards — 200 hp moves a 1.25-tonne car adequately rather than urgently — but the chassis is the reason to own one. Steering weight builds naturally, the rear axle talks to you before it lets go, and on the smoother stretches of the Budaiya Highway or the run out towards Sakhir the car finally makes sense in a way it never does queuing on the causeway approach.
Ride quality is the trade-off. Manama's patched side streets and the speed bumps guarding every residential block transmit through the seat more than in almost anything else Toyota sold here, and the low nose means some kerbs need a wide line to avoid scraping.
Ownership reality
Mechanically the FA20 engine is conventional and well understood by independent workshops, though it is not the same engine as any Camry or Corolla, so a shop unfamiliar with it can miss the specific service points — oil consumption on early cars is a known watch-item worth asking about. Clutch wear tracks hard with how the previous owner drove it, so a car with track-day photos on social media deserves a harder inspection than one that visibly never left the school run.
Insurance in Bahrain treats this as a performance car even though the engine size is modest, so get a quote before you fall in love with a specific listing. Resale is thin rather than bad — there are simply not many buyers shopping this specific niche — so expect to hold the car for the driving, not flip it for profit.