Any one else excited about Toyota/Scion FT86/FR-S?

[MidnightSun]

Video review by Ignition. Some performance numbers, and some more detailed driving feedback.

2013 Scion FR-S: A New Hope? - Ignition Episode 14 - YouTube

[saturnotaku]

Meh. Scion as a brand is dead in the water. They want to sell 20,000 of these annually? Not gonna happen. The entire brand moved less than 50,000 cars in all of calendar 2011.

It was a huge, huge mistake not branding this as a Toyota.

[Shobster]

Meh. Scion as a brand is dead in the water. They want to sell 20,000 of these annually? Not gonna happen. The entire brand moved less than 50,000 cars in all of calendar 2011.

It was a huge, huge mistake not branding this as a Toyota.

I agree with that, but then again, I don't see how branding as Toyota in America is going to be different seeing as how the brand has decided to just sell non-sport cars. Otherwise, the Scion brand wouldn't need to exist.

I wish it was Toyota branded, just makes it sound more respectable than Scion.

[saturnotaku]

I agree with that, but then again, I don't see how branding as Toyota in America is going to be different seeing as how the brand has decided to just sell non-sport cars. Otherwise, the Scion brand wouldn't need to exist.

I would argue that, until the FR-S, Scion has never sold a sports car. The tC is a sporty car but not a sports car.

[Tsunade_Hime]

Scion was to appeal to the youth. The tC again as saturnotaku was a sporty car but not a sports car. Toyota has not sold a sports car since the demise of the MR2/Celica. Toyota recycled the 1.5L Echo engine into the xB and xA and took the Camry coupe and refaced it to the tC.

[unixfool]

Scion was to appeal to the youth. The tC again as saturnotaku was a sporty car but not a sports car. Toyota has not sold a sports car since the demise of the MR2/Celica. Toyota recycled the 1.5L Echo engine into the xB and xA and took the Camry coupe and refaced it to the tC.

Not Supra (MkIV)?

[Tsunade_Hime]

Well the States stop getting the MK4 long before the demise of the Supra (JDM). I suppose so, but funnily enough it was the actual car themselves which caused their demise (the Skyline and Supra).

[saturnotaku]

Scion was to appeal to the youth.

And that's not working out so well for them right now. While Scion still has the youngest buyers in the industry, it's skewing much older than it did when the brand launched. The average age of a tC buyer is now 47. It was about 43 at the brand's peak a few years ago. Also, those initial adopters are now 8-10 years older and have moved on. Although a lot of them have stayed in the Toyota family, so that's a win right there. At the same time, there hasn't been the same influx of young buyers to replace them. "Kids" are more cynical than ever, and the more you try to target them, the more they tune you out. Hence the rather dramatic shift in tone of Scion's advertising.

[MidnightSun]

For those of you convertible fans, there's apparently an FR-S convertible in the works for M.Y. 2014.

[MidnightSun]

Road and Track did a nice comparison between the Subaru BRZ, Mazda Miata MX5, and Hyundai Genesis Coupe, including a lot of drifting.

The full datasheets for the 3 cars can be found here (PDF). Very informative.

A few video segments can be found here.