1:64 Toyota GR86 Larry Chen's HKS Turbocharged GR86

One photographer's car

Behind the subject stands a particular person. The automotive photographer Larry Chen, whose pictures from drift and circuit events are known to everyone who follows the North American scene, built himself a GR86 and did not leave it in production condition. The HKS workshop fitted the car with a forced-induction kit, so the naturally aspirated boxer was given a turbocharger and with it a markedly different character.

Who HKS are

The Japanese firm was founded in 1973 by Hiroyuki Hasegawa after he left Yamaha, and from the beginning it concentrated on forced induction. White combined with blue and black is among the most recognizable color schemes of Japanese tuning and appears on this conversion as well.

The real subject

The second-generation Toyota GR86 has been running since 2021. It has a flat-four of 2.4 liters, 234 horses, driven rear wheels and a weight under 1300 kilograms. It came about again in cooperation with Subaru, which sells a sister car under its own name.

The model

The casting in 1:64 stands on a metal body, the interior is of plastic and the wheels turn on rubber tires. The partners' lettering and the racing graphics are printed with a tampo, not applied as a decal, so there is no risk of the edges lifting in time. The car is neither assembled nor painted.

Conversions belonging to particular people appear only rarely in this scale, because they call for the consent of the owner of the car and of the tuning firm. Castings with such an origin therefore tend to be more sought after in collections of Japanese machinery than production forms of the same type, even though they differ from them only in paint and printing.