Refreshed Toyota 86/Subaru BRZ spied running around the Nurburgring

The Toyota 86 and Subaru BRZ are officially confirmed for a second generation, but it looks like this current car will not go softly into the night. One of our spy photographers just caught a camo’d up BRZ/86 pounding around the Nurburgring with a few changes in store.

This tester only has camouflage on the front and rear of the car, indicating a light refresh is the extent of the styling changes. In examining the car as a whole, it’s a rather conflicting tester. Both the grille and headlights tell us it’s an 86, but the badge on the rear clearly says “BRZ.”  The Toyota 86 has a different grille than the BRZ, and we can see that style grille flanked by some massaged vents on both sides. Toyota uses a different style of headlight for the 86, and these look similar to those used in the current car. New front-design features are covered up by the camouflage, but the sheet metal doesn’t appear to be changing.

Another area of potential change is at the rear of the car. More camouflage on the trunk lid covers the obvious BRZ badge and the taillights. We don’t see much in the way of differences between the taillights on this model and the current BRZ/86 twins, but the manufacturer obviously wants to keep something secret back there.

What we’re most excited about is seeing the extra vent behind the front wheels. Current BRZ and 86 trims don’t feature such intense cooling additions. Above it sits what appears to be a badge or protrusion of some sort. The window-level badging is still visible under the wrapping, but the tire-level badge is a new one — it’s similar to the design we see on the WRX and WRX STI. 

All things considered, this one is a little confusing. Subaru could be adopting a more Toyota 86-esque design, but we suspect a special edition is in the works. Hopefully it involves more than just design tweaks, and gives this model a hearty send-off before the new generation arrives.