Toyota S-FR concept

Should Toyota put the S-FR into production?


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Modal170

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Just to add, this was cancelled and dead, but even more so with what's going on now. If toyota had plans to make this or do some form of this SFR, it got killed very shortly due to this Pandemic.
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KahnBB6

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Just to add, this was cancelled and dead, but even more so with what's going on now. If toyota had plans to make this or do some form of this SFR, it got killed very shortly due to this Pandemic.
^^ More than likely yes. Although with however much R&D went into the car's full design to date it's possible something more than a door handle or interior knob might be repurposed for some other future design. However whatever resulting car that might be probably won't be the S-FR production concept as we knew it.

Don't get me wrong... I'm not holding my breath that we'll see this car again at this point but as a design and engineering study I'm sure some technical lessons were learned from it.
 

Modal170

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^^ More than likely yes. Although with however much R&D went into the car's full design to date it's possible something more than a door handle or interior knob might be repurposed for some other future design. However whatever resulting car that might be probably won't be the S-FR production concept as we knew it.

Don't get me wrong... I'm not holding my breath that we'll see this car again at this point but as a design and engineering study I'm sure some technical lessons were learned from it.
The lesson here for Toyota was man, creating a sports car is expensive. But we do got Mazda, let's see what we can do with them. :)
 

KahnBB6

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^^ If this platform gets shared in any way so as to reach production, especially if that is with Mazda— awesome! :)

Same hopes for Mazda’s new midsize RWD platform and 350hp hybrid inline six engine possibly being shared for a future IS and future Mark II sport sedan :)
 

Modal170

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^^ If this platform gets shared in any way so as to reach production, especially if that is with Mazda— awesome! :)

Same hopes for Mazda’s new midsize RWD platform and 350hp hybrid inline six engine possibly being shared for a future IS and future Mark II sport sedan :)
Just making sure, I'm no A70, but if Toyota is going to make something, the sales figure and cost has to be there. Mazda can do it, Toyota supplies them some help with R&D on a new platform. But I don't see Mazda letting that happen
 

2JZ-No-Sh*t

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The ND Maita is reaching its half life span (4yrs). If a replacement is planned it usually starts taking shape around this time. I'm very curious to see if Toyota will go halfies on it with Mazda.
 

Supra93

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I saw a post that said the SFR was in fact canceled, but Toyota was going to bring it back as a EV. The poster also said it will be unveiled in late 2020. Granted, this was made back in 2018, but I thought I would share anyways. Like with most things you read on the net, take it with a grain of salt.

695048e5gy1fswd68zjenj21kw16nnpf.jpg
 

KahnBB6

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https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&tl=en&u=https://bestcarweb.jp/news/scoop/183646

"A lightweight entry sport with a vehicle weight of about 1 ton, which is a smaller FR model than the 86 exhibited at the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show.
 The best car is equipped with a 1.5L engine that produces 140ps output in its lightweight body, and the price starts from less than 2 million yen, and it will be introduced in 2020.
 There was also information that development was frozen for the reason that the car body that was too compact could not secure the safety of global standards, but in reality, "I already have 86, do I really need to make this car?" Frozen due to the sales decision.
 After that, there was information that the development was restarted as EV sports, but there is no movement after that (One theory is that Yaris GR and GR Copen are in charge of compact size sports models). , And the information that development resources were directed to the 2 models).
 However, Toyota today has momentum that it does not know what to do, and there is a possibility that the plan will start moving again in the future."

This could be promising. Any future for the S-FR will be good. An EV S-FR, so long as it is 100% built as a fun-to-drive and driver-focused RWD small coupe, can be good. But I suspect current battery technology is just too heavy to make it work.

Even still, I'd like to see it come out as a manual hybrid car at least but if it's not that then even as an EV it absolutely has to have the tossable driver-focused mini-86-hoonable ethos of the original concept.
 

supraboi

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Sounds like its dead once and for all.

https://bestcarweb.jp/feature/column/187035

It has a high degree of perfection and was introduced using many magazines even with the best cars. The show was well received, and mini cars were produced, which made us expect the market.

However, it was decided that he would not be on a profitable basis, and thereafter it was not announced at all. Now is the time for the energy-saving call of the 2020s, and now is the time for lightweight sports to be released. The Toyota Sports 800 should have been brought back and carried away.
 

KahnBB6

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gymratter

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The Toyota S-FR was almost certainly a Mazda Miata underneath

https://japanesenostalgiccar.com/the-toyota-s-fr-was-a-mazda-miata-underneath/

The Toyota S-FR concept debuted at the Tokyo Motor Show in 2015 to much fanfare. The lightweight, rear-wheel-drive coupe had a manual transmission and was said to complete Toyota’s “three sports car brothers” trio below the 86 and Supra. Aichi even said its purpose was “to make a whole new generation fall in love with driving.” They got everyone excited about the notion of a sporty Toyota, even built a racing version, licensed Tomica miniatures, and then it disappeared without a trace. What happened? Five and a half years later, we think we’ve solved part of the mystery.

In short, it’s a Miata, but not the one you might think. Some time ago, a source at one of these two car companies cryptically suggested that we inspect the base of the S-FR’s windshield. Because the ND Mazda MX-5 Miata had just been unveiled the year before, we quickly got ourselves in a tizzy thinking the S-FR had ND Miata bones. The prospect of being able to buy a Toyota sports car with Mazda dynamics was very exciting indeed.

But then we just as quickly flushed our theory after seeing that none of the hard points — the locations on a unibody such as pillars and door openings that can’t be easily moved without re-engineering the whole frame — on the two cars matched up. That cryptic message from our source stayed with us, simmering in the back of our minds.

Driving home one recent evening, I was trailing a CX-30 in the next lane on the freeway. A curious design treatment found on several modern Mazdas caught my eye, namely the intersection point of its front fender, A-pillar, and front door. When I pulled up next to my RX-8 at home, I noticed a passing similarity — and then it hit me. Was the Toyota S-FR built from the NC Miata?

sfr_nc.001-640x430.jpg


As you can see, the windshield frames, door cutlines, and the doors on the NC Miata and the S-FR are nearly identical. The distance between the front wheel and front door also appears the same. Dimensionally, the two cars are also close enough for this theory to hold water. The SF-R is slightly narrower than the NC but with a longer wheelbase to accommodate 2+2 seating.

On the inside, the S-FR’s handbrake is in a similar location as the NC’s, and the window switches are on the center console like the NC. It also could explain why Toyota was able to build two S-FRs without much additional cost, when concepts that never reach production have typically only one copy.

However, this theory raises just as many questions than it answers. Why would Toyota build the S-FR off the NC and not the more modern ND? One of the things that threw us off the scent of the NC originally was the fact that it just didn’t seem plausible for Toyota to build a new sports car off a 10-year-old platform.

There were other holes in the theory. But the S-FR rolled on 4-lug wheels, strongly indicating that if it were based on a Mazda, it’d be an ND, which famously went back to 4-lug wheels. The brake calipers weren’t located in the same positions on the SF-R or either Miata.

Nevertheless, given the visual similarities and the enigmatic hint from an insider, we think it’s almost certain that the S-FR was built using a stretched NC Miata. Either that, or the S-FR was a hybrid built using the NC body and ND components available at the time. After all, specs said that a 1.5-liter engine lay beneath the S-FR’s hood. In most of the world, including Japan, the Mazda Roadster is powered by a 1.5-liter engine.

In fact, we’re so sure of this that we’re a bit surprised no one else has figured it out yet. However, we still don’t know why it died on the vine. What follows is our own theory, with no input from any sources, just based on the timeline of the ND Miata and S-FR’s development.

Early on in the ND’s development, as far back as 2012, Mazda had struck a deal with Fiat to build a new Alfa Romeo Spider on the Miata platform. Given the ND’s engineering sophistication, it is no surprise that sharing of development cost was a crucial part of its production viability. In 2014, however, Fiat abruptly canceled the ND-based Alfa, with FCA president Sergio Marchionne declaring that as long as he was in charge, Alfas would be built in Italy.

Then, in May 2015 Mazda and Toyota signed a technology sharing partnership deal. It’s quite possible that Mazda tried to seek out another partner in Toyota around this time, which led us to the S-FR at the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show.

As history shows, in the end FCA did use the ND Miata platform, except on the Fiat-branded 124 instead of an Alfa. A close-to-production prototype of that car debuted at the 2015 Los Angeles Auto Show, just one month after the Tokyo unveiling of the S-FR.

Were Mazda and Toyota actually planning to jointly build the small sports car, or was the S-FR always going to be a dead end? Or, did the deal with Fiat preclude Toyota from using the Miata platform?

To us, the S-FR remains an object of desire and intrigue to this day. It was an extremely promising car that oozed Toyota heritage in its design, and it seemed to have appeared out of the blue. It then disappeared just as quickly. We may never know the real reason the S-FR was canceled, but at least we know the S-FR’s true bloodline and can fantasize about an alternate world in which a Toyota Miata was available to the masses.
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