Toyota 86s Scion FR-S in Name Only, Gets Power Bump

Mark Stevenson
by Mark Stevenson

Scion’s slow-selling FR-S rear-wheel-drive coupe is about to become Toyota’s slow-selling rear-wheel-drive coupe, and it will be branded with the same moniker as in many other parts of the world.

That’s right: this is the Toyota 86, also known as what it should have been named here in the first place.

The sports coupe gets a mild mid-cycle refresh thanks to some reworked body elements, massaged exterior lighting with LEDs, and new alloy wheels so people hopefully won’t mistake it for a Subaru. Performance gets a bump to 205 horsepower (+5 hp) and 156 pounds-feet of torque (+5 lbs-ft), which is welcomed news, but it still won’t be that Supra you lusted over in that sticky-paged back issue of Super Street.

The 86 isn’t the only former Scion being renamed, but the rest are given the Irish orphan treatment. The single-model-year Scion iM will become the Toyota Corolla iM, and the single-model-year Scion iA — known as the Yaris Sedan in Canada, Yaris R in Mexico, and the Mazda2 Sedan everywhere else — will receive the Toyota Yaris iA nameplate in the United States.

Simple.

Toyota will show off its new Toyota-nee-Scions at the 2016 New York International Auto Show alongside the Toyota C-HR Concept, a subcompact crossover to take on the likes of the Chevrolet Trax, Fiat 500X, Jeep Renegade and — arguably Honda’s worst current product — the Honda HR-V.

Mark Stevenson
Mark Stevenson

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  • White Shadow White Shadow on Mar 17, 2016

    Nothing wrong with this car that a small turbocharger can't fix. It would then have the power and more importantly, the torque to make it interesting. Imagine how much fun it would be with 250 lb.ft. available at just 1500 rpm. Toyota really dropped the ball on this car.

  • Buzzyrpm Buzzyrpm on Mar 18, 2016

    I like the revised rear bumper. The front is a bit overdesigned compared to the simple lines of the rest of the car. It will be interesting to see what the BRZ front bumper will look like. My guess is they share the same rear as they do now.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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