So the first 100 miles have gone by for the FR-S. It’s still too early for much of a performance and driving review. It’s pretty frustrating to wait for the “break-in” period to complete. But the 100 miles is enough to form some thoughts on the ergonomics and daily operation of the vehicle. There is very little to complain about with the driver cockpit. I’m sure much work went into that. The seat have good side bolsters, and is thankfully narrow, it actually is effective in keeping me snug! As opposed to the FX where the seats have aggresive side bolsters, but are at least an inch too wide on both side. Driver seat has basic back tilt adjustment and fore-aft slider and also a height adjustment. All are simple mechanical lever actuated.
Steering wheel is “leather trimmed”, I’m not sure which portions are actually leather and which are pleather, but the wheel thickness is good and the diamter is actually quite small. It’s actually the same dimensions as the 350mm Momo that was on the street FX. It features palm bumps on the inside at the 10 & 2 o’clock positions. Fairly small range of tilt adjust, good telecoping adjust. I can achieve a good driving position, as opposed to the Yaris where I can’t quite get an adjustment to give nice leg and arm distance at the same time. The turn ratio, is a bit quicker than the FX, but the radius is bigger. The plastic finisher on the bottom spoke of the wheel looks a bit cheesy. Conventional Toyota light, turn, wiper, interval, washer and cruise control stalks. No steering mounted controls for anything other than horn.
Shifter falls nicely in hand and has quite short throws. The action feels a little notchy, but it seems to be smoothing out. I’ll need to get used to the 6 speed pattern with reverse in the far left and forward position. There’s a lockout ring around the shaft of the shifter that you need to pull up in order to shift into reverse. The thing I need to get used to is getting it into 1st after using reverse, quite a few times I put it into 3rd.
Clutch is taking some getting used to, it’s extremely soft compared to all my other vehicles. Also haven’t gotten used to engagement point.
The e/parking brake lever is in a good position, my only complaint would be that it’s a little too flat, a little more angle would have been nice so you don’t have to cock your wrist so much to pull it. The pedals and position feel pretty good, but arrangement with the gas pedal is making trying to heel toe different from the FX. I think the gas pedal doesn’t extend as low. With the FX I’d apply brakes and the swivel heel over to the gas. With the FR-S my heel doesn’t seem to find the gas, instead it seems I need to use the outer edge of my foot. The little tako feet rubber pads give traction while still allowing for feet to reposition.
Power controls are the usual Toyota style, they make sense, although the armrest grab handle gets in the way of the window switches. Side mirror control is small and works fine, it’s not something you’d adjust a lot. I don’t visually care too much for the shape of the sideview mirrors and pods, they look a bit chunky. It seems the Toyota GT86 has a power folding option, not available for U.S. trims. No big loss. Side mirrors are important, as they are for pretty much all modern vehicles. That has to be my one dislike of current vehicle design, large side pillars, high side sills and trunks make for plenty places for Mayhem to hide! Side sill height actually seems not quite so bad, I can almost comfortably rest my forearm on it. Foreward visibility is good, the hood profile is pretty low. The fender bumps look like they will make for good reference points to judge where the wheels are. There’s a little bump thing on top of the dash that is supposedlt supposed to mark the centerline of the car for additional reference.
Dash layout is pretty straightforward with analog gauges, yay! Large tach is right in the center, features a programmable shift light. Analog speedometer on the left I find a bit ineffectual for daily driving. You can see in the pic how it’s arranged. I guess this being a “sports” car, the speedo goes up to 160 mph. With such a large range and the sideways alignment, usual street speeds find the needle at the bottom, and the tics are hard to distinguis with such a large scale. This is one point where I’m finding myself using the digital speed number indicator in the tach section more. To the right of the tach is the fuel gauge and engine temp gauge, everything else is idiot lights. It would have been nice to have a fuller compliment of gauges. I guess they’re leaving that to be accessorized.
No surprises with the utilitarian vent, fan, and temp control knobs. Easy to operate. Not particallarly elegant or polished looking, econobox fair here! Side vent is the common round rotating louver vent that works well. No nifty cupholder in front of it where you can direct cold air at though. The center vent is a flat squished oblong, with only a single vane for vertical direction, not particularly effective. But the A/C works well. Of course any A/C that works, works well to me since none of my vehicles had operational A/C.
A lot of people bag on the OEM Pioneer audio unit. Yes, it’s not much to look at but it doesn’t bother me that much. It works decently, although the base unit has only the basic audio adjustments. Apparently there is a secondary amp unit. The HD radio is a mixed bag, KORL does have a channel, but the signal oftern gets weak, causing drops. It does have Bluetooth that syncs easily to my iPhone. Once set up it can stream audio from my phone without plugging anything in, although you’ll run down the phone battery. There’s a mic in the headliner for the handsfree. Those features are nice, maybe I should look at getting the Bluetooth working on my nice Pioneer headunit in the FX and swap it in. It’ll be single DIN leaving space for possibly some add on gauges.
Speaking of headliner, there are run of the mill sun visors with unlighted vanity mirrors. There’s a single interior cabin light, when set to Door setting it has a fade on and off. Styling wise it looks pretty unelegant, but it works. It seems they were pretty tight on sound insulation materials. I saw mention that it was kept minimal in the interest of weight. I’m sure reduced cost didn’t hurt. When the rain came down while I was in the car. It sounded like when you’re hanging out in a dwelling with corgurated tin roof in the rain. Overall interior noise was nothing compared to any of my other vehicles, but this is no luxo vehicle. It’s also a good thing in that you can get audio feedback of whats going on in the road. Probably the starkest time you will experience it is when you close the trunk. It closes with a resounding clatter like that fine Kia rental Fab & I had. The trunk lid has no lining material at all.
OK, I’m tired, I will continue this later!
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