2012 Toyota 86 Pricing and Specs

Many, many more wheel studs and nuts have been cross-threaded or stripped by ham-fisted mechanics in tyre shops than have ever been caused by a car-maker using the wrong material for the studs. If it’s the tyre shop that you used that told you about the soft metal Toyota was using, there’s a chance it’s just covering its own backside after messing up what should be a pretty straightforward job.

Busy tyre shops often use rattleguns to remove and refit wheels and while that’s okay if they’re set-up properly, excess tension on the studs can cause the threads to strip. And if the wheel nut is not carefully introduced to its stud, cross-threading is a very real possibility.

A good tyre shop will use a rattle gun set to a reasonable level of torque and then do the final tightening of each wheel nut with a torque wrench set to apply the correct force.

That said, cars are always built to a price and that means the wheel studs on the 86 might not be as strong as some others. Even so, they should not become damaged in the process of having a set of tyres changed.

By the way, you can’t simply multiply the cost of one wheel stud replacement by 20, as a portion of the labour cost is in removing the wheel hub from the car, which only needs to be done once to replace all five studs on a Toyota 86 wheel.

Buying the dealership’s paint protection certainly won’t do any harm, Sue, but it can be expensive as mark-ups are often huge for these products. You might do better with an aftermarket paint protection product from an independent specialist. But here’s the proposition I’d be putting to the dealer selling the car: If you can’t, in 2020, sell me a car that won’t fade or have its paint peel off, I fear we are wasting each other’s time. In fact, you could make the same argument for all those dealership add-ons, the upholstery protection, window tint and extended warranties.

Here’s another fact to consider: Regardless of whether you do or don’t buy the paint protection, the car’s finish is protected by the factory warranty just as the rest of the car is protected against faulty parts of poor assembly. Toyota even spells it out, saying that the factory warranty covers every part, panel or factory accessory. So you’ll only ever need the optional paint protection after the factory warranty has run out. Will a paint protection applied now be of any use five years – and a couple of hundred car-washes – down the track? That’s up to you.

If you don’t want a convertible, which rules out the MX-5 as my easy first pick, then the 86 is the car for driving enjoyment on a reasonable budget. But don’t overlook its Subaru twin, the BRZ, which is my choice of the two. Both get The Tick, having shared our Car of the Year award.