It’s no secret that we’ve been experiencing dwindling color choices in cars over the past few decades. Nearly everything’s adopted some sort of greyscale palette, washing away technicolor joy with dour corporateness. However, every so often, something bucks that trend and tugs on our heartstrings by painting in shades of the rainbow. Case in point: the 2025 Toyota GR86 Hakone Edition is here to remind everyone how great green-on-tan is.
Keen followers of the Toyobaru will note that this is the second Hakone Edition this automotive bloodline’s seen. You might recall that in 2020, Toyota classed up the 86 with a green-over-tan special edition of the same name. Evidently, it worked well enough to go back for seconds, and that’s precisely what we’re getting here.
The 2025 Toyota GR86 Hakone Edition starts with the Premium trim and first adds the performance package. That means in addition to an eight-speaker stereo and 18-inch wheels, you get Brembo brakes with four-piston front calipers to repeatedly haul this sports coupe down from track speeds and Sachs dampers to keep body motions in check while soaking up apex curbing. However, from there, things turn a little more luxurious.
It starts with a rich shade of paint called Ridge Green, contrasted with bronze 18-inch alloy wheels. Say what you want about forest green and bronze being a cliched color combination, it’s hard to deny that this just works. While I’m not crazy about the contrast of the red calipers, the rest of the exterior package alludes to the classics, and Toyota didn’t stop there.
If you’re coming from the realm of even moderately premium products, you might not be impressed with the standard GR86 interior. Hey, you have to break a few eggs to build a sports car like this at an affordable price tag. However, the Hakone Edition puts a little pizzazz on it with tan leather bolsters, matching contrast stitching on interior trim components, and color-matched piping on the floor mats. It’s an elegant, if subtle, sort of elevation that ought to make the cabin feel just a little bit nicer. Rounding out the Hakone Edition package is some tasteful badging, an engraved shift knob, and a limited edition plaque indicating that Toyota’s only building 860 of these little green coupes.
Of course, should you wish to buy a GR86 and not splurge on the Hakone Edition, all models get a few intriguing upgrades for 2025, starting with revised throttle calibration. Toyota claims this new mapping should make blipping the skinny pedal for downshifts easier, a little fine-tuning for driver involvement. Also on the table? Revised electric power steering calibration, which Toyota claims will offer “an improved sense of direct contact with the road.” Oh, and if you need to have an automatic transmission, you’ll be pleased to learn that the rev limit for driver-commanded downshifts has been raised by a whopping 1,600 rpm. Complementing the software tweaks, models without the Sachs dampers receive revised dampers that have the potential to be stiffer than in the outgoing car. It all adds up to a compelling package.
Regardless of whether you’re looking to pop for the Hakone Edition or keep things simple with the base model, expect the 2025 Toyota GR86 to roll into showrooms across the country this autumn. While Toyota hasn’t released pricing yet, we wouldn’t be surprised if it stays close to the 2024 model’s affordable price tag.
(Photo credits: Toyota)
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Great paint
my god I want a gr86 even more now-though is this a matte finish-in which case not a fan. why won’t they just offer this color in the standard set, cmon toyota. These cars have no interesting colors besides bright red available the rest feel like the same paint you’d get on a camry after they dropped neptune blue.
That looks really sharp. I have a friend that got the matte finish on her EV6. She regrets that decision. That finish is a PITA to care for
Interesting news about the automatic. Now throw in rev matching for the manual and all the bases will be covered.
I actively avoid rev-matching manuals. I spent a lot of time learning how to heel-and-toe blip on downshifts and I know I’d never do it again if I had a computer to do it for me.
If they did it for the GR Corolla, it’s not such a leap to add it to the GR 86.
Booo, make the whole interior tan. Not just tan strips. The green with gold/bronze wheels though. Yes.
That’s the least amount of brown/tan that you could add to a car to make it newsworthy. C’mon, Toyota. Go all in! Be like the green on brown VW Alltrack
Or a C5/C4 Corvette
What’s the significance of Hakone in the car world? I only know,it from Microsoft Train Simulator.
The Turnpike.
https://tougetour.com/2020/01/03/hakone-turnpike/
Thanks, I’ll need something more maneuverable than an EMU set for that route
It’s a shame that in order to get a decent exterior color and an interior that isn’t a basic black hole that you have to wait for a special edition…
And Toyota will probably make 2 of them.
It is like finding a Nori Green metallic Lexus. Or a Grand Highlander with the gray interior instead of pitch black.
Nope not two, more like 860.
Who is saying forest green and bronze is a cliched color combo? WHO?
Some guy named Justin wearing oakleys in his blue Wrangler with yellow stick-on accents.
It’s gorgeous. The last one was gorgeous too and dark green over tan is the most tried and true color combination in sportscars that there is. That being said, it sucks ass that you have to go through a Toyota dealership to get one. The Hakone edition will be marked up significantly, many of them will be sold to dealership employees and friends of the ownership, they’ll wind up on Cars and Bids and sell for $45,000, etc.
Toyota’s allocation system is asinine and gives dealerships carte blanche by design. Toyota also releases a “special edition” of every enthusiast car they make every year and limits production to drive up demand. It’s a deeply cynical approach. But JDM fanboys can’t be reasoned with and will line up in a cloud of vape smoke and axe around the block to pay 5 figures over sticker like they always do.
If you want one of these get a BRZ. For some reason they aren’t selling and Subaru will let you order one however you want. They’re also less likely to play games with you than a Toyota dealership is.
Damn guy, guess you had a bad experience with a Toyota store? lol
Too bad they don’t make a crossover of this. I’M KIDDING, I’M KIDDING! Love the little sport coupe and thank goodness for the Japanese car makers. Green is good, is what Gordon Gekko would’ve said if he was a real gekko.
I’m likely buying a Grand Highlander at some point since I can’t put two dog crates in the back of a GR86. If they offered it in this green with beige/brown interior with gold wheels, I’d scour the country for one.
Glad to see a desirable special edition finally! But the throttle calibration stuff is THE big news here for anyone that has a manual one of these things. Inconsistent, touchy throttle is easily the cars biggest flaw, requiring a tune and warranty risk to fix.
All of my fingers and toes are crossed that the new SW can be applied to earlier MY cars. I already talked to my service guy and he said that’s not unusual to see.
Especially dumb for a car sold as a track or drift car where fine throttle modulation is desirable, but instead they waste almost half the pedal travel so they can make the car seem more powerful during a test drive or whatever reason it is that they did that.
It’s been over a decade, what is Mazda even doing?
Building more crossovers. Coming soon to a dealership near you, the MX-5 Miata Cross replete with black plastic cladding around the wheel wells and rocker panels. You read it here first.
daddy likes… the GR86 has been what I wanted to replace my “daily” with too.
I love the 10th anniversary edition, but this looks better. However; inside it is tan like a seltzer tastes like the flavor on the label.
Yeah, just a splash of tan. Color me disappointed.
Hint of hint of tan
Tan, but with a low battery
Someone gently whispering “tan” on the factory floor during assembly.
Way too much of that interior is still black IMO.
Nice effort, but you’re still looking at pure midnight from the driver’s seat.
Damn, maybe i need to get a GR86 again…
Nice. Now if they were only available without the mandatory 10K dealer mark up.
Which is why I can’t have nice things anymore…
Every new green car made causes my wife serious anger that Honda no longer offers the Woodland Green Pearl Metallic from her 97 Civic as a color option.
I feel the same way but with the Camry and woodland green pearl from 00
WANT! I had a 97 Integra in green with tan cloth, and I agree that green over tan is the best color combination ever.
Limited edition = unlimited dealer market adjustment.
These will all be bought for more than sticker by the tik-tok tubers.
the last one actually wasn’t bad on markups from what I remember, and it isn’t like the gr86 isn’t easy come across normally.
Before I got my Mustang, I had been eyeballing another SN95 convertible… but it was a V6. However, it was green over tan and that was almost enough.
Any addition of a good green is appreciated.
Just beautiful. I’ve always loved the way you could see the British roadster culture influence in the early Japanese stuff, and this is such a great reference to that.
Related, am I the only one impressed that the Camry of all things is now available with a lurid red interior?
I caught the same Toyota ad a few times during the NASCAR street race this past weekend and was amazed that a Camry would offer an interior hue that was once the provenance of Corvettes!
For a while, you could get a Camry with 300hp and the red interior. Dent not included.
Unless you buy used.
Too bad it’s a special edition, that color combo should have been regularly available from the start
Moot point anyway since I’m not allowed to buy a coupe, or any car in that price range, as a condition of employment. At least as a daily, and why buy any new car for any other purpose?