According to Motor1 citing its own sources, both the Toyota GR86 and the Subaru BRZ will drop out of production in Europe next year due to the increasingly strict safety requirements.
Note that this has nothing to do with eco standards. While it is true that older, larger engines can be too expensive to redesign for emission compliance, this is apparently not the main reason here. According to the sources, Toyota and Subaru are more worried about having to install multiple mandatory safety devices and features in these cars. Aside from being expensive to design and implement, they may lead to both cars losing their ‘driver-focused’ status.
Starting in July, all vehicles sold in EU must come equipped with a ‘black box’ of sorts capable of storing the car’s entire telemetry from 5 seconds before any road incident and 0.3 seconds after to help with the investigation process. Later on, the list will expand to include mandatory driving assists and safety features. Europe is currently implementing a large-scale driving safety program detailed up until 2030.
All non-compliant cars will be banned from the market, but that’s not even all. Owners of existing cars will not be able to resell them, either, and even if they do the new owners will not be able to get them approved for public road use in the EU. This means the Japanese automakers will have to get rid of their non-compliant stock before the regulations make it impossible.
