So what's the gas mileage on this thing?

Are those Recaros?

Gross.

They look to be the stock GT86 seats but with the alcantara suede part swapped out for some sort of new material.

Just another way to buy an 86 spec'ed out like a BRZ Limited (with a limited edition paint job).

It might be that killing Scion and handing the car over to the Toyota marketing dorks was a bad idea.

That is a European car. It never was a Scion and was always in the hands of Toyota marketing. The same applies for 90% of the other worldwide Special Editions.
Scion probably had nothing to say about what went into the other Special Editions either. Scion as a business unit consisted strictly of a sales and logistics force and had no designers or engineers of their own.

They have always had BRZ spec'ed 86s in Europe. In fact everyplace in the world has. In fact they are the norm elsewhere and what most countries didn't have was the low spec versions that the FRS was.


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Thanks again, I know it was a Toyota. Are you saying that the Scion corporate organization had nothing to do with advertising or product design? Got a link?

Scion corporate consisted of 35 people in an office. You really think they had any say in product design. Scion was a marketing arm of Toyota and that was all they were. No product development. No design team. Nothing.
Advertising was about all they did and they didn't do a very good job at that.
There are many articles about exactly what Scion was if you just do a little research on your own.
If you knew it was a Toyota then why did you even say that it was handed to Toyota?

"Scion" was created because no one thought young Americans would buy a Toyota anymore after they'd mismanaged the brand into low-thrill people movers and grocery-getters. Scion did the marketing* in America, but had nothing to do with product design. Every Scion vehicle was badged as a Toyota somewhere else in the world. IIRC the move happened around the same time Lexus was created to be the upscale badge. The idea was to have three brands in America; a youth brand, a family brand, and a luxury brand.

*And I do mean marketing. While they did some traditional advertising (print/TV), their focus was more boots-on-the-ground guerilla advertising; like events and sponsoring music festivals. You know - for kids. It worked OK for a while in the 90s, but there really never was a valid reason to rebadge the cars.

Lexus was created in the late '80s, roughly the same time as Acura because the Japanese manufacturers were putting in enough effort to fight the luxury brands like BMW and Mercedes, but nobody would buy them because of the badge. A ~$20k Honda or a BMW (at the time) wasn't even a choice for most people when 'jap crap' was still the common mentality. That changed after people saw how good '80s Japanese cars were as they decimated everyone else in durability through the '90s.

*insert the million mile Lexus meme*

Scion was founded in 2003.

I agree with everything else you said.

When I was in middle school i thought it would be cool to get a Scion XB as my first car. It was actually the car i ended up using in Drivers Ed a few years later ironically.

I dated a girl with a first gen TC and knew a few more girls with them. Hard pass on one of those, its basically a Camry coupe.

Of all the Scions of course the FR-S is the one to get now that I actually know about cars, reminds me of the cool Toyotas I used to see as a kid (Supras, Celicas, MR2) that are gone from the roads. I hope in another 15 years there will still be some type of sporty Toyotas whether its a new Supra or 3rd gen GT86

Americans are stupid too, since every time one of those advertisements about a new drug or treatment "that you should ask your doctor about" comes with 75% of the commercial dedicated to all the ways this drug will affect you or kill you.

"Here, take this medicine for diabetes but the side effects may or may not straight up kill you."

At least Europe is making some effort to inform you as a consumer.