Also as reported on
FT86club Homepage.
Toyota FT-86 - what you see is what you'll get
Steve Sutcliffe / Autocar
On the site today
you'll notice a story on the Toyota FT-86 Concept. Since I wrote it various rumours have been doing the rounds on the internet about the validity of the car’s design. According to these rumours “an unofficial source in Japan” has claimed that the final design hasn’t been signed off yet, the insinuation being that the car we photographed bears little true resemblance to the one that will go on sale in 2012.
I was, I admit, a bit shocked by these rumours, having recently spent a day with the car and some of the people responsible for its design. So I started to do some digging, and it now seems that the situation is a wee bit more complicated than it first appeared.
http://www.autocar.co.uk/csfiles/blogs/stillatthewheel/Toyota%20FT-86.jpg (broken link)
What I can gather, having communicated with numerous official, unofficial sources within and outside Toyota, is this. In 2012 Toyota will definitely launch a rear-wheel-drive coupe that will have an unusually low centre of gravity, and for a target price of less than £20k equivalent to today’s money. But its final production design has indeed not yet been finalised.
However, what I can also tell you is that, unofficially and very much on the QT, Akio Toyoda himself loves the current design just as it is, especially the rear end. He’s also taken particularly keen note of the enthusiastic way in which the FT-86 concept has been received by its critics. And so, basically, it would seem he wants to keep the production car’s design as close as possible to that of the concept, once various aspects have been integrated to make it production friendly; such as pedestrian crash protection etc.
In other words, and despite nothing yet being officially official or otherwise, what you see is what we’ll get.
Which is very good news if you ask me.
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In the metal, says Sutcliffe, the charm of the FT-86 is achingly apparent. For starters, it's no more than two-thirds of the size you'd expect it to be. The Audi TT - not a big car - dwarfs it.
Beyond that, the most striking aspect of the car is how low the bonnet line is and how snugly the whole car seems to hug the ground as a result. This is because the engine is derived from Subaru's famous flat-four 2.0-litre 'boxer' unit.
Senior Toyota designer Cech estimates than the bonnet is around 100mm lower than it would be with a conventional four-cylinder engine in place, but cautions: "It won't be quite as low for the production car. Unfortunately, we have to raise it maybe 50mm to meet pedestrian crash protection legislation."
Mechanically, the car is fairly conventional. Suspension is probably wishbones at the front and almost certainly multi-link at the rear, transmission a six-speed manual and the chassis conventional rear-wheel drive.
What will make it special, claims Toyota, is the ultra-light kerb weight, which may be as low as 1250kg in production trim, its purity of response, its handling agility and the fact it will have a proper limited slip differential.
Another distinguishing feature will be its interior, and in particular its dashboard, which may even include software that provides data acquisition for a host of circuits.
Sutcliffe concludes that the FT-86 is a deadly serious attempt to take a slice of the lucrative affordable coupe market , as well as recapture and repackage the DNA that made Toyota's cars so popular in the past. "The sooner it goes into production, the better," he says.
For the full Toyota FT-86 story, buy this week's Autocar magazine, on sale now.
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http://cdn.media.autocar.co.uk//Car/Toyota/172101033248183234x155.jpg (broken link)
Q&A Jaromir Cech, Toyota FT-86 designer
19 February 2010
The Toyota FT-86 concept will be a production reality by 2012, arriving in the UK with a target price of less than £20,000 for the entry level model.
To find out more about the car, which rumours suggest will be formally confirmed for production at the upcoming Geneva motor show, Autocar sent Steve Sutcliffe to meet its designer, Jaromir Cech.
What was the design brief for the car?
The first ideas we had came after some feedback we got from the engineering people. They told us they’d been testing this car, and that it drove just like a go-kart on the track. And so we thought, ‘Well, we need to make a car that looks like it drives like a go-kart.’
So when did you first start designing it?
A little over two years ago, since when the idea has been refined, obviously, but still with those same themes at the centre: driver focus, purity of form and functional beauty.
Were there any influences apart from the original rear-drive Corolla?
The Corolla represents a lot of the FT’s basic design influence, but really there are a number of cars that we looked at, from the Supra to the original MR2.
You were primarily responsible for the interior; which bits are you most proud of, and which aspect do you think will make it into production?
I’m proud of the interior. It’s deliberately extremely driver-orientated and contains quite a few fresh ideas, especially within the modular dash design.
I’m not sure whether the zips idea for the doorbins will make it into production — it may prove too difficult to mass-produce — but I hope one day we’ll see something like it in a production Toyota because it’s a simple but also functional solution.
And like I say, that’s the key design theme for the whole car: functional beauty. That came right from the very top.
Also some new pics from the interview:
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