,
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| Pay attention carefully, and you'll notice that Toyota cleverly disguised the automatic shifter to look like a manual shift knob. |
Our remaining gripes were few. The horn is pathetically anemic, both in tone and volume, and sounds like it's mounted somewhere in the passenger footwell. The exhaust note is entirely too composed for a vehicle of sporting nature. The intake honk injected into the cabin adds some sport, but does nothing for sound off the throttle, and the exhaust note sounds more high-performance vacuum cleaner than sports car. As is expected for a car this size and with a “2+2” designation, the back seat will cause immediate mutiny from anyone you send back there other than small children and dogs.
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| Any friend you subjugate to the FR-S' back seats won't stay your friend for long. Mutinies are to be expected. |
On the track, the car proved fun to drive, especially since we were better able to explore the car's limits. Handling balance is mild understeer under throttle, with some lift throttle oversteer on corner entry – even with the automatic-equipped model we sampled. Throttle-on oversteer is almost impossible to invoke without first breaking the rear tires loose under braking, so don't expect to replicate many scenes from Smokey and the Bandit. The brakes were firm and fade-free on the track, and proved easy enough to modulate.
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| Lift throttle oversteer came surprisingly easy. |
The drift course, while amusing, was more like a high school parking lot hoon-fest than it was a real drift session. The course was a little too small to truly push the car, and the car's polar-moment made it recover from drifts far too easily at the speeds we were going. We also stink at drifting, which probably had more to do with our failure than the car.
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| Scion Executive Vice President Jack Hollis' personal FR-S definitely shows how the aftermarket can improve the already excellent car. The body kit and wheels are by Five Axis. |
In the end, the Scion FR-S proved to be the car Toyota and Subaru said it would be from the get-go: cheap fun with soul.
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| The FR-S is such a cool car, even this random feller in a BMW, of all things, approved. Hang loose, bra! |
