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Toyota GT86 gets TRD treatment in UK

As dearly as we love the Toyota GT86 / Scion FR-S / Subaru BRZ franchise, we readily admit we wouldn't look sideways at a model with a bit more firepower. And while that's not quite on the table yet, Toyota has been busy amping up the visual firepower of its rear-drive coupe with a whole host of TRD parts. To this point, that's been a largely à la carte affair, but the automaker's UK outpost has just announced a special-edition model that allows our British friends to pick up the whole shooting match all in one go.
The Toyota GT86 TRD will only be available in black and white, and just 250 examples are to be built. As you can see from the excellent gallery above, the catalog of look-faster bits include a more aggressive front air dam, side skirts, rear bumper fascia, spoiler and unique 18-inch forged alloys. Additional flourishes include a TRD shift lever and branded radiator cap. The sole concession to actual performance? A "fast-response quad exhaust" that might only improve things audibly - 0-62 mph is apparently unchanged at 7.7 seconds, and the top end is still 140 mph for the manual transmission model. (The auto gets by with 8.4 seconds and 130 mph).
Pricing? Glad you asked. £31,495 for GT 86 TRD manual, £32,995 for the automatic - that's nearly $50,000 US for the tripedalist and just over for the automatic. (Those are heady prices, but bear in mind that UK MSRPs and taxes are generally significantly higher than their US counterparts). If the standard GT86 is more your speed, it still rings up at a more affordable £24,995 - roughly $39,500 - leaving plenty of budget for actual performance parts. No word yet on North American availability of a special TRD model, but we've got a call in...

2014 Toyota FJ Cruiser Ultimate Edition

Introduced at the end of 2006, this is the last year for the Toyota FJ Cruiser, the reincarnated FJ40-series Land Cruiser that will shortly journey to Takama-ga-hara, the Plain of High Heaven. In its first model year, we drove it to SEMA and found it, shall we say, coarse. It bobbled on the freeway and droned in the cabin, its boxy interior providing four bounce-boards for unpleasant frequencies. Tall mirrors helped one work around the eclipse of vision aft of the B-pillars, but navigating traffic required forethought and technique. Its turning circle was measured in kilometers. For the first two years of its life, it needed premium gas. It may have been fun to look at, but we couldn't wait to get out of it.
That's not the case anymore, and now the FJ Cruiser is poised to join a long list of vehicles that got better and better, then got axed.
Driving Notes

Toyota, Honda, Nissan and more collaborating to increase fuel efficiency

Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Suzuki and Daihatsu have announced an alliance that will see a push to improve fuel economy from both gas-powered and diesel-powered engines by as much as 30 percent before the end of the decade.
The newly assembled Research Association of Automotive Internal Combustion Engines put the roughly $20-million project together, with the Japanese government committing to half the cost while the eight manufacturers will chip in the rest.
According to Automotive News, the automakers will team up and share basic research on internal-combustion engines in a bid to cut costs. Eventually, the results of the research will find its way into a production vehicle, although it's unclear just when we'll see the fruits of this partnership on the road.