pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/coupes/" rel="tag"Coupe/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/sports/" rel="tag"Performance/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/japan/" rel="tag"Japan/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/tokyo-motor-show/" rel="tag"Tokyo Motor Show/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/rumormill/" rel="tag"Rumormill/a/pa href="www.7tune.com/086a-target-market-change-power-drop/"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2009/07/086a_tokyo_motor_show_587-630op.jpg" alt="" //abr /br /This is not a fine kettle of fish. For some time now, fans of Toyota's AE86 Corolla and Subaru rally cars have been licking their chops in anticipation of the a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/04/10/toyota-confirms-rwd-sports-car-coming-in-2011-with-subaru-boxer/"Toyota/Subaru-developed coupe/a. Affectionately known as the Toyobaru or 086A, the coupe is poised to resurrect the FR arrangement in Japan and give Toyota a much-needed excitement injection. Or maybe not. The JDM lovin' folks at a href="http://www.7tune.com/086a-target-market-change-power-drop/"7Tune/a are reporting that the 086A is being neutered by about 40 hp in order for the new vehicle to be branded as an "eco car" in its home market. br /br /But don't fret too much, as the plan is to simultaneously lower the coupe's weight, boosting the power-to-weight ratio. The other (maybe) good news for American consumers is that the power reduction seems to be effecting only the 2.0-liter boxer engine, a motor that Subaru no longer sells in the US. Meaning that we can expect our 086As to come with at least Subie's naturally aspirated and ubiquitous 2.5-liter boxer, if not a whole lot of turbo plumbing -- if makes it to the States.br /br /Toyota is also banking on the fact that previous AE86 owners will view the new car as a nostalgia purchase. As such, they've changed the cars demographic from the coveted, if not fanciful, 18-35 year-old range to the more-likely-to-actually-buy-stuff 30-50 year-old male range. Most of these rumors will be dismissed for good when the Toyota/Subaru coupe makes its debut at the a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/Tokyo-Motor-Show/"Tokyo Motor Show/a this October.br /br /[Source: a href="http://www.7tune.com/086a-target-market-change-power-drop/"7Tune/a]p style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/07/31/rumormill-toyota-subaru-coupe-drops-40-hp-loses-weight-market/"Rumormill: Toyota/Subaru coupe drops 40 hp, loses weight, marketed to your dad?/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.autoblog.com"Autoblog/a on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:27:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/07/31/rumormill-toyota-subaru-coupe-drops-40-hp-loses-weight-market/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/19115168/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/07/31/rumormill-toyota-subaru-coupe-drops-40-hp-loses-weight-market/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/apa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/V8Dexrj0a7U5ckL1e8YuAGma5NU/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/V8Dexrj0a7U5ckL1e8YuAGma5NU/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/V8Dexrj0a7U5ckL1e8YuAGma5NU/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/V8Dexrj0a7U5ckL1e8YuAGma5NU/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare"a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=7WIr5QQgBjk:SdWkk7W2dZE:wF9xT3WuBAs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=7WIr5QQgBjk:SdWkk7W2dZE:wF9xT3WuBAs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=7WIr5QQgBjk:SdWkk7W2dZE:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=7WIr5QQgBjk:SdWkk7W2dZE:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/7WIr5QQgBjk" height="1" width="1"/

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