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New Toyota sports car!

If they put a decent motor in it without bundling all the expensive options, it may be a play versus Hyundai Genesis Coupe. A fun car with with a good price.
 
Apparently, test driver Tada Haraguchi spilled some beans;

The engine? It’s still EJ20 based shape. But Toyota re-casted everything, even down to the engine block with a new design, and with the Yamaha acoustics assigned to make every pulse, beat, and soul of air and vibration to become something to spice performance and tactile feel. Not much is exactly shared with the Subaru engine except the flat four configuration. However, the external mounting points remain the same as the Subaru EJ20, shared for very obvious reasons. That is so you can use a Subaru engine to swap if you prefer the Subaru engine for racing. Why bother with complex fabrication, if Subaru has something you can use from 11 years of WRC?

Everything about this car is basic and pure. It’s thought out for the aftermarket builders, racing operations, and not without YOU as enthusiast, the grassroots racers, custom builders, show car builders, and parking lot meet goers. Take for example. The front dash has a beautiful sweeping line, and yet the front corners recessed into the front window base. I asked why… and Tada san replied… “It’s so you can install a roll cage to regulations for many venues, without cutting up this dash” [...]

However and despite the unforgiving global economic climate, in the last 5 years of development of the FT86, the best minds converged for this project. Mr.Haraguchi initially to select the key individuals fir for this task, and Tada assigned ultimately, oversee the project. Both are people from MR2 and AE86 projects in the past as well as 2nd Prius and other successful cars with future mind. To add to this, eventually along the process came, the resources and technology brought from the Lexus LFA program, Teams from Subaru including WRC minds of STi, and the whole time, forced and secured by the CEO of Toyota, regarding this as his own favorite development. [...]

Mr.Tada, and his team, logged thousands of miles in the FT86 test mule, and he says it’s STILL not finished… 5 years, and still perfecting it every day, from materials of rubber bushings to see if steering feel can be improved or gas pedal to react more passionately, and details like equipment choices on the interior. In fact, this meeting was immediately after he was shaking it down in Arizona in the massive heat…to see it through that this car will outlast the most abusive of us in what he calls madness. I assume that to be our crazy tendencies to attend silly events where we burn rear tires all day long. But yes, he has that in mind for us…

What if I told you that FT86 has NO CD player, and no Navigation screen? It’s entirely possible… He figured we’d all have smart-phones to tell us where we’re going by 2012, and all we need is an FM radio to tell us if the world is ending. And for all other times on the road, he’s like us to listen to your favorite iPOD, or the beautiful sounds emanating from the exhaust system specifically designed for this car by the best ears at Yamaha Acoustic Instruments company. All this, while sitting in seats made in collaboration with the best aftermarket and OE racing operations and sports car makers.

Source: Club4AG, via DRIVR




Akio Toyoda is a proficient and enthusiastic driver and a big fan of this car, often dropping in to test drive it. Akio has recently shocked the staff on Nurburgring, Testing out of the blue, and drew a whole crowd of officials in panic when he strapped himself into the FT86, and started to chase down a LFA Nur-Edition that was also testing concurrently by a different department. Slipping the tail masterfully around the wet Nurburgring track…
 
Here it is....the production version (in Euro spec)

Toyota+GT+86+02.jpg

Toyota+GT+86+06.jpg
 
Toyota does have that knack, recently anyway, for making cars that feel more like appliances then cars.

An affordable two door sports car would be great though. Maybe after I get the chance to have a newer, retractable hardtop Miata :p

The only domestic competition right now is the Mustang. The Camaro and the Challenger just aren't sports cars.
 
Now the speculation is base price will exceed $25,000. At 197-hp and a basic standard-equipment list, it's knocking on the door of some competitors that will offer better road feel than anything Toyota has ever produced. The BMW 128i with its 230-hp I-6 for $30,000 comes to mind.
 
BMWCCA said:
Now the speculation is base price will exceed $25,000. At 197-hp and a basic standard-equipment list, it's knocking on the door of some competitors that will offer better road feel than anything Toyota has ever produced. The BMW 128i with its 230-hp I-6 for $30,000 comes to mind.
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197HP. :sigh: It better weigh no more than an Ariel Atom.

Oh wait, it has to be heavy to comply with safety regs. So it will be Civic SI slow.

I can get a helluva nice used M3 for 25K. :D
 
I wish GM would just dust off the molds for non-GT version of the Fiero, drop in an updated turbo 4-cyl in the 200+ hp range and NOT put in the base version electric this and that, auto this and that, 400 speaker 100,000 watt audio with iPod hookup, etc and let Lotus do the suspension, engine and, handling tuning and Bembro the brakes. Let Lotus tune it for sports car and rally competition performance so it can take a corner unlike most US tuned cars. Keep the weight in the range of the earlier Fiero and let 'er rip.

Maybe Ford could dust off the 1955 T'bird stamps and again, keep it simple and introduce a really good looking personal touring car for a change. Yes, I know they tried the retro T'bird and sales were not great but it looked too soft, too feminine for my tastes.
 
Fiero would not meet today's safety and emissions rules, likewise the T-Bird. And you've got the Airbags, the ABS Brakes, and the other such to add weight which you can't avoid unless it is some very low production specialty car not legal for street use.
 
This is due to come out in a few months, and I'll be buying something in about 10-12 months. This falls within my budget and I'm very excited to drive one. Everything that I've looked at new is FWD...except for the BMW 1 series...which would represent the upper end of my price range.
 
The first review of the Scion FR-S is in from autoguide.com (with video)....

The best Toyota in 20 years

In a related note, Subaru has confirmed that their next generation WRX will pack a new 2.0L turbocharged flat-four powerplant with a targeted horsepower rating of 270-hp. The powerplant will be a turbocharged version of the FA20 powerplant found in the new Subaru BRZ/Scion FR-S.
 
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Subaru thought the new Toyota/Subaru sports car was a bad idea and that Toyota couldn't build a sports car....

The Scion FR-S might be the most exciting sports car in years and it might also be the most important project Toyota has ever launched, helping change perceptions about an automaker that has become known for building appliances. But the back-to-basics enthusiast sports car almost never happened, according to Chief Engineer Tetsuya Tada, speaking at the car’s launch last week in Japan.

The concept for the car, originally the brain child of then Toyota VP Akio Toyoda (the man currently at the helm of the world’s largest automaker), was initially rejected by Subaru, which eventually went on to donate the engine to the project and even handle the lion’s share of the sports car’s development, resulting in both the Scion FR-S (also known as the Toyota GT 86 in Europe or just the 86 in Japan) and Subaru BRZ.

Shortly after Toyoda took the helm, Tada san was assigned to a planning division set up for the project. After studying what everyone else was doing, (seeing the use of turbochargers, all-wheel drive and high grip tires), Toyota decided to move in the opposite direction, instead opting to build a sports car that harkens back to the roots of machines like the AE86 – from which the GT86 gets its name. It occurred to Tada san that an ideal powerplant would be a boxer engine, due to its low center of gravity. Toyota had an historical precedent for the use of a boxer engine in the Sports 800, built from 1965 to 1969. Toyota also just so happened to have access to such engines through a recent purchase of shares in Subaru parent company Fuji Heavy Industries, and a shared project could help foster relations between the two rival automakers.

A proposal was penned, for a rear-drive, boxer powered sports car and presented to Subaru, which immediately axed it. Subaru executives had two major concerns says Tada san, the first being that a rear-drive machine doesn’t fit with Subaru’s all-wheel drive brand message. The second reservation, and one that speaks to Toyota’s newfound attitude of taking ownership of its beige-to-drive past, is the admission that Subaru didn’t think Toyota could build a sports car. And while harsh, it’s not entirely surprising, after all, the last sporty Toyota was a Celica GTS in 2006 and the last rear-drive Toyota car to roll off an assembly line (at least for US consumption) was in 2005.

The project was then suspended for six months but eventually the team involved at Toyota helped convince the powers that be at Subaru. Exactly how that happened remains a mystery, although one possible conclusion can be drawn from a graph Toyota revealed to AutoGuide and a group of journalists gathered to drive the car at Sodegaura Forest Raceway, just outside Tokyo. On it is a breakdown of who handled what in bringing the GT86/BRZ to market. In the end, teams at Toyota were responsible for planning and design while manufacturing and development were handed over to Subaru. The concept may have been Toyota’s, but Subaru, a company with plenty of recent and current enthusiast-targeted models, was tasked with ensuring the FR-S/BRZ was a fun-to-drive, dynamic handling machine. Toyota representatives steered clear of confirming as much, but it would seem a compromise was struck, with Subaru bending on the rear-drive architecture. In exchange, Toyota handed over development of its sports car to Subaru.

As a result, the first prototype was build back in 2008, and was what one Toyota exec referred to as “proof of concept”, prompting both automakers for forge ahead with development and design, leading first to the FT86 concept at the Tokyo Motor Show in November of 2009, through numerous concept cars, all the way to the official reveal at the same show two years later, our recent gushing test-drive, and a planned on-sale date of this Spring.
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Also reported is that Toyota will determine whether it will go ahead with a successor to the Supra. Honda has confirmed it will produce a successor to the Honda/Acura NSX.
 
Looks about the same size as my wife's eclipse... it has a 3 litre 6 in it, and that car is a dog... not what I would call a sports car with 200hp..

I see they gotta cheat the lack of displacement by using a super charger.... and maybe if they added full time N02, then I'd think it might be what I'd consider a sports car power wise....

Seems unless you wanna pump out big bucks, you just get the sports car look and not performance...
 
I guess that depends on what you want in a "sports car". If your definition includes Veyron speed then I suppose you're right. I would imagine this new Toyota would handle quite a bit more sportily (I just made that up :)) than my wife's Honda Odyssey. My Tacoma runs 190hp and it's plenty fun to drive. My sister-in-law has a '93 MR2 (that she still refuses to sell me) that was rated at about 130hp and I love driving that thing. I can see something small and low slung with ~200hp being a blast.
 
My big ass Ram out runs, out corners, out turns, and out drives my wife's sports car.... go figure...
 
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