Monday 16th April 2012
Toyota GT 86 gets the chop
No, that chop - just a speedster conversion for an appearance at the weekend's Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach
We may consider Toyota the beige chinos of motoring over here, but in the States you can at least get three different styles. In Lexus you've got the beige slacks for heading down to the golf club (UK Lexus drivers prefer mustard-coloured strides), in Toyota you get - well - beige, while in Scion it comes as low-slung combat pants. Same basic premise, tailored to different audiences.
That's 61 inches of wing for you, right there
Where does this slightly tortuous, trouser-based analogy lead us? To the Scion FR-S - the
Toyota GT 86 as we know it - and a slightly mad-looking but officially endorsed Speedster chop built for the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach event at the weekend. The car was actually announced last week but seems to have kept a low profile outside of its home turf. But we thought it worthy of a shout!
Scion's job is to peddle Toyotas to the 'youth' market in the States, which means lots of Mini-style flirtations with the iPhone-owning masses and occasionally cringeworthy examples of big business trying to get down with the kids. In fairness Scion has also embraced US custom culture in a big way, bringing a mad selection of IQs along to last year's SEMA show including a rear-driven mid-engined version and a roofless 'Pit Boss' by Cartel Customs.
'Jazzy' in here, it has to be said
And it's Cartel, along with Iacono Design, that has come up with this FR-S Speedster, complete with classic Toyota racing livery and possibly unnecessary 61-inch (that's 1.55-metre to all you cheese -ating surrender monkeys) fixed rear wing. The interior gets a makeover too, performance mods restrained to KW coilovers, a GReddy exhaust system and a Wilwood brake upgrade.
All of which contrives to offer a closer glimpse of what the rumoured GT 86roadstermight look like than that achieved by Riggers and 10 minutes in Photoshop...
