[andygee]

im just posting all these quotes so that a lot of questions can be answered

if you want to get a better idea of what the production car will look like,
look at the ft-86II that was shown in geneva. the fr-s shown at the
ny auto show is a true "concept" while the ft-86II is 90% production ready
in terms of "sheetmetal". the car your seeing there is 95% production ready,
its not a mule anymore. suspension testing is what your seeing there.
they will run about close to 10+k miles on the ring in less than a month.
in the process they will see and compare data recorded on fuji.
one of the things you might see during testing in future photos will be
different wheel and tire set ups. the car i was told if driven incorrectly
has a tendency to snap oversteer, the suspension will be tuned to over but
not to the point where the average driver won't be able to control it.
they will test whether calibration or the need for a wider set up for the
rear will help. that's where the rings multiple turns come in,
the track is great for data gathering.


Toyota or Subaru?
to answer the question what car is being tested, its both.
it is a joint venture project so any data recorded is shared and
analyzed by both companies and engineering depts.
when it was in fuji it was 50/50 that was testing not at the same time.
here at the ring its actually a little more toyota because they have a
larger base compared to subaru. the parts your seeing maybe subaru gift to the test.
again this is all for data collecting that's why I said you will see different
wheel and tire set ups before but more important everytime it goes out it will
have new suspension set ups as well. we've seen questions about the car styling.
toyota when the first concept bowed in late 2009 has been wind tunnel testing the
design as early as 2010. the first concept didn't meet standards. while it looked
great it wasn't slippery enough and produced a lot of noise. the data was given to
the designers and they came up with FT86II. the II like I said is what the actually
car will look like the most from a body panel standpoint.



during data testing we bring crates and crates filled with parts that we think will
benefit the car, that ranges from springs, shocks, wheels, tires, aero,
control arms, ecu, transmissions even engines. we have a full working garage at
the ring where we can remove and replace any piece we want to gather as much
data as possible. the cars final shakedown should be be done by summer.
aside from a tuning standpoint we are also able to stress test all
parts and disassemble after testing is done.


about the LA spy shots,.
t.m.s. is in torrance (l.a.), ca so its not a subaru...
there's more than one vehicle. this car has been all over u.s. gathering data and miles.


it has nothing to do with marketing buzz at all especially with toyota press imbargos.
there's more than one car. you happen to only see in it in germany and socal but there's
a prototype testing in very cold weather where there are no spy photographers and in japan.
the reason your seeing it in a socal freeway was for engine temp data gathering in severe
stop and go driving. you will see more spy photos when we bring it to the desert.
all these spy photos your seeing is because these are no longer mules but close to
pre-production to test for problems that we didn't see. all data recorded will be severly analyzed
way before it goes into any production car. also, to answer questions who is doing most of the testing,
just look at what cars are around the test, even down to the plates they're using. i'm seeing the ring
pictures just like you and those plates look very familiar. we don't have email or phone access to the
testers there but they're doing the same thing were doing stateside but a lot more fun. the socal plates
you saw like i said before are toyota motor distributor plates not subaru.
toyota is being very shy about how much work they're doing, which is a lot.
they've built a great car that just need a few things which they have in my reports.


actually the things that the car doesn't need (e.g. nav or leather, park assist etc...)
is not being added by t.m.m. but t.m.s. which is a distributor not manufacturing.
when a land cruiser goes to south africa they could care less about park assist.
t.m.m. will ask the distributor what they want and build a vehicle specific for their region
based on what the distributor thinks would sell. don't place too much blame with manufacturing
its the distributors that you need to get angry with. fyi: pwr seats and moonroofs won't
make it into the fr-s. they were also tinkering not having any pwr win/lks at all and making
everything manual but that was quickly shot down.


nope that is not the subaru version but still the toyota. i guess this isn't really confindential.
subaru is still working on their design and has taken all the aero data from
toyota to finalize their design. that's why you've seen two design concepts of
the FT and none from subaru. that's a pretty good spy shots because we didn't
spot them but we did see a few phones snapping away. regarding the steering wheel
that's not finalized but you will see a lot of sharing of parts that's available
currently to keep production costs low. the sti people were visiting and that is not a turbo FT/FR that's following it.