As you’ve seen from our coverage, Subaru and Toyota chose the 2011 Geneva show to update the world on the progress of their jointly developed front-engine, rear-drive sports coupe. The interesting bit is how differently these two companies are approaching the reveal of this long-anticipated vehicle.
For the heavyweights over at Toyota, the FT-86 II concept announcement was almost a throwaway remark in the statement made by Didier Leroy, President of Toyota Motor Europe. At the press conference on Tuesday, Leroy devoted nearly all of his speech to a detailed discussion of Toyota’s hybrid strategy and only briefly referenced the FT-86 II concept at the end of his remarks:
“I want to focus on the passion that’s returned to Toyota in recent months. That passion is back in everything we are doing and in every new product we are developing. You can feel the passion in the only non-hybrid we’ve got on the stand, our FT-86 II concept car. This is the evolution of the concept we showed in Geneva last year and closer to the final car we will launch next year, as part of a new wave of Toyota products.”
The passion is back, eh? Indeed, buried all the way back on the last three pages of Toyota’s 18-page Geneva press kit. Not exactly the ringing endorsement hachi-roku and Celica-Supra fans the world over were waiting for.
No new ground was broken either, just a reiteration of what we already know:
- The new FT-86 sports car is being developed in conjunction with Fuji Heavy Industries (parent company of Subaru – though Subaru is never mentioned)
- It will use a ‘free revving boxer petrol engine’ mounted in the front, driving the rear wheels.
- A six-speed manual should be on offer when the car goes on sale in 2012.
- This concept, dubbed ‘Functional Beauty’, is a product of Toyota’s European Design Development center.
As they are wont to do with a concept, Toyota put the blacked-out FT-86 II out of reach from show goers up on a fast rotating platform – revealing nothing but its sleek LFA-sque styling.
Subaru, on the other hand, proudly showed off its ‘Boxer Sports Car Architecture’ see through model, displaying some of its vital guts – including the low mounted boxer engine, front MacPherson strut and rear control-arm suspension. The message was as clear as the concept’s body panels: Styling be damned – Subaru, not Toyota, is taking the lead on important things like the engine and suspension.
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