I have been lurking on this forum for a while now but I feel like I need to jump in on this one.
There is a lot of good arguments for various options and pricing structures for this car. Here are my $0.02:
I do not see this vehicle being offered in a "budget" version with a lower end power plant. The reason? It just doesn't make financial sense to lower your entry level price to a lower margin point. In the US you already have a budget "sports coupe" in the form of the tC so you have a market option for customers who want a sporty car in out the door for $20K. I think Toyota's goal for this car is to bolster its budget youth brand offering with a higher margin car that draws in the older 20-somethings (people born during the original AE86 era) that have a little more cash to play with than the typical tC buyer.
I also do not see the benefit in Toyota offering the car in the $30k price spectrum because I believe they will be pricing themselves out of a class where they can be competitive and into a class were they are not as attractive an option unless the power output is much higher than we are all assuming.
If I were Toyota's product manager I would shoot for a $25k base price with a 2.0L Turbo engine in the 260-280 hp range. This puts you in a sweet spot in terms of your own product line and the cars that customers will be comparing you to. I would expect that this car will follow the typical Scion model were there are essentially no options only dealer installed custom items.
In regards to the comments referencing aftermarket modifications - Toyota doesn't care. Most people do not significantly modify their cars so Toyota's goal is to get the customer what they want out of the box (to make money), in this case it is a great driving, lightweight, quick (but not fast) RWD sports coupe. Any cheap car can be built or modified to be faster (sometimes much faster) than more expensive sports cars. That doesn't mean that modifying a car like this is a better option (I'm not saying its worse either, just not right for a lot of people).
All things said, I really hope this car comes with a 2.0L Turbo so I can ditch my Cobalt SS and run this in SCCA STX
Great discussion so far guys. I am interested to see what others have to say on this topic.
-Sneaky