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Originally Posted by coyote
You kids make me laugh.
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What do you mean, you mean the way I talk? What? I’m a little fucked up maybe, but I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh, I’m here to fuckin’ amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny?
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Originally Posted by old greg
Because that's not something auto manufacturers usually do with pre-production prototypes. IMO, the VLN race speaks more to Toyoda-san's love of motorsports and his bromance with Dr. Ulrich.
There's a saying that goes something like this: Don't take a car to the track unless you can afford to crash it, and don't race a car unless you can afford to set it on fire and push it off a cliff. These cars aren't being efficiently stamped out in mass quantities they were hand built and in very small numbers. In fact there may only be two or three in all of Europe. And while the material value of these cars is irrelevant, they'll all be crushed in a few months anyway for tax purposes, they are still needed for testing. And even though the Gazoo Racing car came through unscathed, it's now useless for pre-production testing/tuning due to the welded in roll cage. Even if Subaru wanted to take a BRZ to go racing, I really doubt they could justify ruining a second prototype in order to do so.
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I think it's great PR. It shows the President of the largest (or there about) car company in the world is proudly standing behind his product. Not only that, it shows the confidence Toyoda-san has in the car; to preform and to live up to the expectations established for the FT-86.
At this point in the game, with only about a month left until the debut a loss of either a BRZ or FT86 would cause some panic but wouldn't produce a "WTF are we going to do?" scenario. As you said, I don't think Toyota would race the car if they couldn't afford to write it off (both from a testing/engineering or financial standpoint.)