It isn’t everyday that we use the latest out of Toyota to provide a benchmark for a vehicle class, but we’re going to go ahead and say it’s safe to declare that is exactly what we’re doing with the Scion FR-S. The Subaru and Toyota tie-up has yielded a car that far exceeds all expectations. Greater than the sum of its parts you might say, the Scion FR-S (and its sister cars: the Subaru BRZ and Toyota GT86 [not sold in the US]) has stolen the torch away from Mazda and its Miata as the bar to which affordable driving fun is measured. Read more…
We’d like to thank Akio Toyoda. Without him we wouldn’t be writing this review because the Scion FR-S, and for that matter the Subaru BRZ, wouldn’t exist. And having just returned from flogging the budget minded Scion-badged sports car around the track and across the desert we know better than most that enthusiasts will be lining up to shake Mr. Toyoda’s hand once the FR-S goes on sale this summer. As the story goes, about five years ago Mr. Toyoda—a driving enthusiast himself—noticed that his company no longer offered an affordable sports car in the image of the AE86 Corolla GT-S. About that time Toyota found itself with an increased equity stake in Subaru and decided to give a passionate team from both companies the goal of righting that wrong. The target was a small, affordable, lightweight sports car with rewarding handling as its defining characteristic. In the summer of 2009 the joint effort was approved and now three years later driving enthusiasts have a very compelling new reason to part with $25,000. Read more…
