Quote:
Originally Posted by oneday
Yes, Scion is supporting Dan Gardner Racing and two other Scion teams in the series, similar to how Subaru supports Vermont SportsCar. Maybe Toyota wants Scion to build the ground work needed to develop a racing heritage of it's own--which some feel people here is a prerequisite for having a RWD car. Honda races under the Acura brand in the US (in the same series as DGR's tC), how is that so different?
Mazda doesn't get to claim that "
program (it's really not hard to get, and that's the point). |
One of the differences is that Honda's recent push into lower-level racing with Acura is not the reason teams like Realtime are using Acuras. Realtime started back in the day because the Integra and NSX were excellent starting platforms. I'm sure they received a bit of funding but nowhere near what Scion/Toyota is throwing around. They even were making and selling their own parts to support their racing (Comptech).
As for the Mazda claim. Two words: Spec Miata. Genuinely grassroots, still factory support for the series but not for individual teams. But again an excellent starting platform, that doesn't need tons of money thrown at it to not suck.
This is my issue with what Toyota's doing. It is doubtful that any team would have chosen a tC platform without all of the factory support that came with the marketing push. Instead of starting with a good car for the Scion racing campaign, they took what is basically a more styled version of the typical Toyota driving appliance and threw a ton of racing money at the racing versions to make them competitive.
As well as a full-race production-based tC may do on the track, it is much further from its stock version's handling and performance traits than for example a TSX or RX-8.
If that's going to change with the FT/R-86/S as a Scion, so be it.
But I do not have faith in what Toyota North America/Scion's management may want to do with this car. They are discovering that they do not need to sell a real performance car to have a performance image.
(Also shown by Toyota's NASCAR experience.)
PS: He's not a Troll, guys. He's a tC owner that's all...