Toyota is hoping to bank on their recent success with their incredibly popular 86 coupe by teasing us with a new concept car at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show.
The Toyota S-FR is new coupe concept that has been designed with lightweight and nimble handling in mind. Better yet, as the name might suggest it follows the classic FR sports car design of being front-engine and rear-wheel-drive for better balance.
The body is interestingly proportioned, with a long nose and an almost bubble like cabin set further back. The overall size of the car is also incredibly small, at just 3.98m (13ft) long, 1.69m (5.5ft) wide and 1.32m (4.3ft) tall. To give you an idea of just how small this car is, check out the wheels in the photos. How big would you guess they are? 17-inch perhaps? Not quite. They’re just 15-inches in size, nicely proportioned but very small when compared to many modern cars.
Toyota’s press release notes that the car’s layout, size and light weight makes for nimble handling. As a concept, however, Toyota does not specify an engine or transmission for the S-FR.
The dashboard has a unique design, with a smartphone holder in the center and a single digital gauge display for the driver. Despite the sports car look, Toyota notes that the S-FR is designed to be practical. To that end, it has four seats, although getting into the rear looks difficult.
The S-FR looks like it would make for a very fun sports car similar to the Mazda MX-5 or Toyota’s 86. But its dimensions suggest it would not be capable of holding all the air bags and safety engineering necessary for the US market.
We’ll have to hang out and see if the S-FR makes it into production, but we believe a lot of people are excited about the prospect of such a vehicle being introduced into the Toyota line-up. And out of all the concepts seen at the Tokyo Motor Show this year, perhaps this one has the best chance of making it onto our roads…
2 comments
Ugly as hell.
I don’t like this car. At the front it looks like and angry Fiat 500 trying to impersonate a Peugeot and at the back it looks like an Alfa 4C that’s had bad plastic surgery on it’s butt.
The interior doesn’t seem too well designed. For example, it has no glove box (from what I can see it seems to be some sort of strange alcove), the door bins are about the size of the pockets of a hoodie. The switches behind the bottom of the steering wheel seem to obscured to reach. The cup holder looks to have the same problem as that of the Audi R8, you’ll elbow your drink every time you change gear.
The phone dock which I assume is in the bit behind the hazards button is not in a good position either as it obscures some buttons. All of the radio and heater controls are on the driver’s side, that means that passengers have to reach over the driver’s arm if they’re changing gear.
My last complaint is that Toyota seems to have chose a very specific target market. A market which consists of fry cooks that have lost their door side arm (their right arm in the case of the pic) and have had a prosthetic spatula fitted instead. I fail to see how anybody will fit their hand/fingers in the gap between the wheel and the door. And I doubt my depth perception is playing tricks on me here as this is a small car. compare the wing mirrors to the rest of the interior, how big are those expected to be?
I’m really not looking forward to this car.