Why don't we get all the cool gizmos in the USA?
 

Ultimately, there's 2 reasons why we dont get to have nice things here in the USA.

1) We're too cheap. The top of the line BRZ, the BRZ S retails in Japan for 35,000 USD and the 86 GT retails for 37k USD. You also gotta remember that there's less room for haggling in Japan. And also, they actually have to ship these cars to the states. I think it started back in the day when Detroit had the advantage of being bigger and a stronger market share in the states. The only way the Japanese could undercut was to offer quality cars and they skimped on options because the market didn't demand them. Even today, you have people on this forum saying, I don't need HID, I don't need Auto Climate control. And Japanese cars don't quite have the cache of European models which can get away with added luxury at the additional cost premium. If every Japanese maker (and now the Koreans) are playing the game, Toyota and Subaru has to as well.

2) We're quick to modify stuff. I've been in Japan for the last 3 weeks (I'm Japanese/American) and I was speaking to a guy who has a Ducati with twin front brake discs and 4 piston calipers on each disc. He said that the USDM stuff always sucks because the manufacturers know we either aren't willing to pay for them or we'll just upgrade it because we're a DIY nation. In Japan, most people want a complete solution that doesn't need modding. You gotta realize most Japanese people don't even have garages, much less enclosed garages, even in Sapporo where I'm currently staying gets 20ft of snow annually, but only one of my friends here has a garage.

OTOH, those who do modify in Japan (which you see in magazines) are willing to go whole hog into modifying their cars. They make sacrifices to do so, and that's why they can get stripper RA models in Japan. The RA model in Japan goes for 25k and doesn't even have ventilated rear discs or rims!

Solution for Toyota and FHI:
Figure out what they can skimp on and what they need to splurge on to hit a bigger demographic here. That's why nothing as fancy as a GT Limited or BRZ S but nothing as stripped as a RC or BRZ RA. We do get 4 wheel ventilated discs on all our cars (only GT and S in Japan do), And LSD on all our cars (only the GT and S in Japan do), but we don't get leather speaker covers, red stitched knee pads or exhaust tips.

Hope that puts some perspective on things.

Not sure about that, there are tons of "modders" in Japan. That is why most of the good stuff comes from Japan. If that was true and nobody in Japan was into tuning why would there be so may tuners and manufacturers in Japan? Why make all your parts in Japan to send to the US or europe? materials are harder to get and more expensive and you have to ship out everything by boat or airmail to your customers?


They may not DIY or have garages, they do go to shops to have work done.

Apparently this guy didn't see 86 day in japan where it seemed 80% of the FRS/BRZ were modded...

Where do you come up with this stuff? :bonk:

When does "lack of money" become "cheapness" in your mind. It looks like you are having trouble distinguishing your character from that of all Americans. Most people in the US cannot afford to spend $10,000 for extra goodies on a $25,000 car. In case you have been sleeping, or playing Warcraft the last 20 years, Americans' income has not been growing. And since the very wealthy have vastly increased their share of national income, this means that middle-income Americans (FR-S buyers) share a significantly smaller piece of total income.

American buyers are not "cheap" - they lack money, and are no longer indulging in the fiction that credit card debt equals extra income.

Yeah, I disagree on both points.
My biggest issue with the FR-S is that it has a Scion badge on it. I would have loved to gotten the car as a Toyota and optioned the car up a bit.

Am I going to put HID's on my car? Yes I probably will, but in the long run it will probably cost me more than an factory option.

I think the reason they skimped out on options for North America is due to affordability for a younger target market. The Toyota 86 is aimed primarily towards males aged 35-49 making total household incomes of $150k AUD ($157k USD) per year (Source: page 13 of PDF).

Clearly, most Scion purchasers aren't making that kind of dough and as a result, many luxury options (HID, leather seats & panels, climate control switches, heated seats, etc.) had to be removed to keep the price point as low as possible without affecting its core sports car characteristics and performance features (ie. LSD, traction control, vented (larger) brake discs, 17" wheels, etc.)

I tend to agree with your points. Well-stated.

I would rephrase point #1 as "willingness to pay" though. Like another poster said, it's not necessarily true in every instance that the US market is too cheap, but rather cannot afford to pay for these things. So at the end of the day, the most financially prudent thing to do is to appeal to the lowest common denominator and find out where American shoppers draw the line to determine whether or not to buy.

Cost cutting ... Mazda removed the chrome trim rings off of NA Miatas to save money .. .seriously what did they cost Mazda? $1 or 2? ... but when you consider they built half a million of them, it adds up.

You wrote all that about the leather knee pads and exhaust tips? Compared to every other Japanese car I've seen they have kept the US model BRZ incredibly close to the JDM model. Ever looked at the difference beween USDM and JDM STIs? It is a stretch to even call it the same car. Generally all the goodies are kept just for Japan, but with the BRZ there really isn't much difference.

Cost-cutting is not the same thing as price-cutting. Cost-cutting for the consumer is when a firm takes a product and removes value, while selling it at the same price. That is not what Toyota did. Instead, they de-contented the vehicle in order to sell it at a lower price. The value is not necessarily effected.

When Mazda removed the chrome rings from the Miata, they may have removed value from the car. But that is hard to tell. The $2 they saved on the rings may have instead been used for better piston rings. Automakers are always juggling visible versus less visible content to establish the costs to make a vehicle.

In the case of Toyobaru FR-Z, it is pretty clear that there were extraordinary efforts to add real value to the car in less visible ways. For example the aluminum hood, the groundbreaking dual fuel injection system, 4 wheel vented disc brakes, the "pagoda roof" design, front seat construction, deerskin steering wheel cover, helical LSD. To set the market price they wanted, they clearly saved money on the center console, the stock radio and clock.

Well then count me in as one of those whom PREFERS regular HVAC controls over "climate " control systems and who really doesn't give a damn about HID's. If its there, great but won't make or break it for me and quite happy not to pay for.

The thing you have to wonder about Toyota in general is, how many smart men do you think they had sitting around a table in a room just to come up with the marketing for the car? There had to be some sort of meeting, or meetings, about what options, what car, and what badge to offer where. They made the best plan they could with what they had. You have to assume that Toyota is smart enough to know exactly what they need. They probably researched it pretty extensively. The scion, and the price point were probably the highest rated choices they had.

I'm with you. One of the few things to break down in my RSX was one of the sensors for the auto climate control. A manual system would have continued to work just fine.