Look up “Scion” in the dictionary and the answer you’ll get puts the automotive brand into perspective. Answer 1. “A young shoot
 |
| Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press |
or twig of a plant, especially one cut for grafting or rooting.” Answer 2. “A descendant of a notable family.” Scion is a comparatively young offshoot of a very notable family, Toyota, and it’s even rooted in the youth movement.
When Scion began as an exclusive California-only project just after this current millennium turned, and then soon expanded across the U.S., it seemed like Toyota was onto something big. Toyota Canada bought into the program seven years later, and while most auto scribes including yours truly were all gung ho about the idea, in retrospect they may have been better off giving it a pass, or at least augmenting the program. Why?
Unfortunately, today’s youth aren’t all that interested in cars. Ask any teen what matters
 |
| Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press |
more, getting their driver’s license or a new smartphone, and… well you probably already know the answer. Getting a driver’s license used to be a rite of passage, a critical step for youth to find freedom from their “oppressive” parents while simultaneously providing a way to hang out with friends. The internet changed all that. Today’s young people are just as happy “connecting” on a home computer or more often than not via their smartphone, obtaining a driver’s license merely something they hope to get around to at some point, and it’s not because of a boring lineup of new model offerings.
Scion, which offers fewer unique models than any mainstream volume brand other than Chrysler or Smart (both with three), has an exciting lineup just the same. Its smallest
 |
| Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press |
iQ is one of the tiniest cars available in Canada, ridiculously thrifty on fuel, plenty of fun to drive and stocked with full-colour infotainment that wirelessly connects to your smartphone, while its xB is a wonderful automotive oddity that’s as provocative as it’s practical. On this practical note, Scion will bring a sportier version of the Euro-market Auris five-door to North America later this year (perfect timing to replace the now defunct Toyota Matrix) dubbed iM, while the other half of Scion’s portfolio is made up of sports models, the brand’s best-selling tC coupe and the FR-S I’m covering here. The tC takes care of the cost sensitive sporty front-wheel drive market whereas the rear-drive FR-S is all about purebred performance.
Truly,
 |
| Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press |
if the FR-S can’t get today’s youth excited about driving, nothing will. This is one of the best sports cars that’s come down the pike in a very long time, and that it can be had for just $26,450 plus $1,495 in freight charges, or less if you’re paying cash, is amazing. If Toyota was producing cars as good as this for as low a comparative price when I was getting out of school in the early ’80s, and then again if borrowed money was anywhere near as cheap, I would’ve continued living at my folks place instead of my downtown apartment and then spent every dime I made as a cook at The Keg in order to get my hands on one, but alas the Corolla GT-S (a.k.a. AE86) that the FR-S design team looked to for inspiration might’ve been a great performance car but it was nowhere near as pretty to gaze upon as this FR-S. Not even close.
The
 |
| Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press |
FR-S may be old news now that it’s in its third year, but it’s still a beauty. Every time one goes by I can’t help but turn my head to take it all in, and the optional black gloss TRD 18s on this particular tester look fabulous. The car initially took the market by storm in May of 2012, helping to increase the Scion brand’s Canadian sales to a highpoint of 5,783 units that year, but since then interest has waned in the car and in Scion overall, the brand’s sales dropping off to 4,978 units in 2013 and a mere 3,962 last year. And with 733 Scions sold through Q1 of 2015 things aren’t getting any better. Rather, if the brand continues to nosedive, the year’s sales won’t even break 3,000. To put this into perspective, Toyota’s Yaris is on target to do more than twice as many sales this year (it sold 8,530 units last year), and it’s nowhere near the most popular car in the Japanese brand’s Canadian lineup. That honour goes to the Corolla with 48,881 sold in 2014.
So
 |
| Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press |
why should Toyota Canada care about a mere 3,000 units from a brand that likely gives it more headaches than it’s worth? Unfortunately for FR-S fans, that’s a question we don’t want them to deliberate on. We can only hope that either Scion finds a way to attract more buyers with its new iM, or that when the experiment implodes they see the importance of having an FR-S with a Toyota badge on its hind end (half the tuners do that with their customized rides anyway). Until then, get down to your local Scion dealer and buy an FR-S while there’s still time.
When you do you’ll have a choice between the brilliant six-speed manual infused car I drove late last year or the impressive six-speed automatic I tested more recently. You might think that an automatic is an abomination in a car like the FR-S,
 |
| Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press |
but in this case you’d be wrong. While I’d choose mine with the DIY gearbox because I’m wired to do things the old fashioned way, the Subaru-sourced four-cylinder puts out enough torque for the automatic to get up and go quickly. Flick the gearshift lever to the left in order to engage manual mode and let your fingers do the walking via the steering wheel-mounted paddles, and then get ready for some serious fun.
I certainly didn’t waste any time, rear tires kicking out in a wonderfully predicable state of oversteer while rounding the first corner I came to. Oh how I love this car! Trust me, you can spend tens of thousands more but you won’t get a more enjoyable performance car. You might get a faster one, as the FR-S’ 200 horsepower 2.0-litre boxer isn’t going to win you many drag races, but find a set of tight,
 |
| Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press |
fast-paced switchbacks and you’ll leave most anything else far behind, Scion’s little wonder being one of the best balanced cars on the market for any price. The autobox snaps through its six gears quicker than you might expect, the changes short, direct and immediately engaging so you can get hard on the power as quickly as required. You’ll feel like a driving pro thanks to rev-matched downshifts, the technology designed to keep the engine in its “sweet spot” so you don’t lose any speed while exiting corners, where you’ll no doubt appreciate the FR-S’ standard limited-slip diff.
This in mind, ahead of the shifter, which looks just like a manual thanks to a round leather shift knob and leatherette boot, is an assortment of silver buttons, the one to the left for turning off the stability control, the toggle in the middle for Sport
 |
| Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press |
or Snow mode, and the one on the right for engaging VSC Sport, which lets the rear end slide out in controlled abandon like I just mentioned. Consider VSC “Drift 101”, an electronic driving school to help novice drifters skill their craft without allowing them to get into too much trouble, the system letting the FR-S’ rear end slide sideways just enough to get the adrenaline pumping but not so much that control is marginalized.
Hard to believe, but the old FR-S was actually even more tail happy. For 2015 Scion modified the suspension so that its rear tires won’t let go as readily, with the benefit being a car that’s quite a bit quicker through curves. The back end grips pavement longer, and when pushed really hard the front rubber lets go a bit sooner,
 |
| Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press |
this corrective understeer now inducing a more traditional sports car feel. Overall it’s a more balanced handling experience, achieved by stiffening the front suspension and retuning the rear shocks.
The FR-S isn’t all about performance, mind you. A quick glance at its interior will tell you that style plays as important a part of the equation inside as it does out. The theme is black with a fair bit of racy red, the needles on the primary dials spinning in the appropriate hue, complemented by red stitching around the leather-wrapped steering wheel, shift knob, and shifter boot, plus on the knee pads edging each side of the lower centre stack, each opposite side around the speaker grilles, plus each padded door upper and each armrest, not to mention the seats front and back,
 |
| Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press |
while small swatches of red material highlight the front seatbacks where the shoulder bolsters flare outwards.
Those seats are as brilliantly supportive as they are comfortable, their cloth designed to grip the backside when pushing the car hard through the corners, yet like the ride, which is as firm as one would expect in a car like the FR-S, although hardly punishing, they’re fully capable of keeping driver and front passenger smiling even after a full day’s drive. Those in back may not feel likewise, however, as the coupe’s 2+2 layout is best left to short folks for short stints only. They’re more accommodating than a Porsche 911’s rear jump seats, but not as useful as those
 |
| Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press |
in a BMW 4 Series, although the FR-S is a heck of a lot more capable of hauling four than a Mazda MX-5 that comes with none.
Improvements to the 2015 FR-S’ interior include a new carbon-style dash panel, new automatic on/off headlights, and a new key design. The rest appears much the same, the red highlights already mentioned combining with nice soft synthetic surfacing in all the important spots, very good quality switchgear, totally user-friendly phone connectivity, and pretty decent Pioneer infotainment. All in all the FR-S cabin is a great place to spend time, even if you’re stuck in traffic.
The
 |
| Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press |
price needed for my 2015 tester’s six-speed automatic is $1,180, and that’s one of very few options available, unless you want to customize the car with loads of dealer-added accessories such as those TRD wheels noted earlier. While this might prove fun, most FR-S owners are happy with the car’s impressive assortment of standard features such as its tilt and telescopic steering column, powered windows and locks with remote access, air conditioning, cruise control, and that Pioneer entertainment system I just mentioned with its 6.1-inch colour touchscreen display, Bluetooth hands-free phone connectivity with audio streaming, auxiliary and USB ports, and eight speakers including two tweeters, a set in the instrument panel, a woofer on each door, and a pair on the rear shelf. My tester included the optional infotainment upgrade, which adds navigation, dynamic audio and text-to-speech functionality.
Like
 |
| Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press |
the rear seating area, the FR-S 196-litre (6.9 cubic-foot) trunk is quite small, although it’s sized similarly to competitors in the compact sports coupe segment, while the rear seatback can be folded forward in a single piece for longer items. For instance, one of my buddies stows all four of his racing wheels on slicks in back so he can clean up at weekend track sessions.
New five-cycle fuel economy estimates will make those in the muscle car crowd envious, as the FR-S is good for 10.9 L/100km in the city, 7.9 on the highway and 9.6 combined when equipped with the manual, or 9.6, 7.0 and 8.4 with the automatic.
Whether your intentions are focused on the road or track the FR-S sounds pretty impressive, doesn’t it? Like I said before, if a car like the FR-S can’t get people to buy into a brand, what can? And this said, what should parent company Toyota do about
 |
| Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press |
Scion’s sagging sales numbers? That debate has been raging on the interweb for some time, and no doubt being considered in Toyota’s corporate boardrooms. The problem is that most buyers who step onto the Toyota showroom floor still don’t know what a Scion is and therefore won’t buy into it as easily as they would any of the brand’s models if a Toyota badge were on the hood, so fewer cars are being sold than otherwise would be. I believe the FR-S and iQ would sell much better under the Toyota nameplate than they do now, while the Toyota brand would benefit so much more from the trickledown effect of halo cars like the tC and FR-S, making models like the Corolla and Yaris appear like they’re from a more exciting carmaker. With a lukewarm youth market and an older generation unaware of the Scion brand, continuing to prop up Toyota’s California experiment might be a lose-lose proposition.
There’s
 |
| Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press |
another problem too. I’ve spoken with Toyota/Scion salespeople in urban areas who tell me they could sell many more FR-S’s if they had any. They talk about a complete lack of stock exacerbated by cars sitting for months on dealer lots in rural areas that don’t attract as many FR-S buyers, going on and on about the frustration they have because these dealers won’t trade for their cars despite sitting on them for so long. It seems strange that there’s not enough allocation for a model that only sold 1,559 units in Canada last year, and a mere 225 for the first three months of 2015.
In the end, the only thing they could do to make FR-S better is make more of them available in Canada, and possibly put Toyota badges on each end. Don’t get me wrong, as there’s a lot cool about Scion, but didn’t the automaker’s CEO Akio Toyoda sign off on this car to help improve the Toyota brand image? To give the Toyota
 |
| Photo: Karen Tuggay, Canadian Auto Press |
nameplate more spice, that aspirational trickledown effect I mentioned a moment ago that helps consumers emotionally connect with a brand? The same Toyota/Scion salespeople who let me in on the FR-S lack of availability were the ones who told me that a lot of potential buyers wouldn’t buy a Scion product because it’s not a Toyota, even though under the skin that’s exactly what it is. People are funny that way. They want the real thing.
No matter how you badge it, the FR-S is the real thing. It’s one of the best performance coupes money can buy, and one of my personal favourites. Personally I don’t care how it’s branded, as long as it stays in the Toyota family for many more years to come.
©(Copyright Canadian Auto Press)
