The Toyota GR86 costs $32,000 in base form and provides a quality of driving engagement that cars costing three times as much work hard to replicate. This statement should require extensive qualification, and it does not. The GR86 is a rear-wheel-drive, naturally aspirated sports car weighing 2,822 pounds with a 228-horsepower flat-four that is intended not for straight-line performance but for the kind of driving that roads and tracks reward in direct proportion to the driver’s willingness to use the entire rev range and manage the car at the limit of adhesion.

The case against the current Porsche 911 GT3 is that it is too good. The controls are too precise, the chassis too composed, the engine too willing — it conceals how fast it is going and how close to its limits you are, which means you can arrive at speeds that require considerable competence to manage without having received adequate warning that they were approaching. This is not a criticism that would survive scrutiny in court, but it is the honest assessment of what makes the GT3 different from sports cars that communicate their limits more generously.