2013 Scion FR-S: Best Car To Buy 2013

The compound doesn't assume all that hard: ablaze weight, a fun but not amazing engine, counterbalanced handling, and an affordable price. But so few companies bother to accomplish such a concoction, it seems about bewitched if a new one acreage on our plate.

Those are the capacity of an entry-level sports coupe--and they're a acceptable description of the 2013 Scion FR-S. Those assets are aswell the acumen it's up for our Best Car To Buy 2013 award.

Like its Subaru BRZ twin, and the Toyota GT-86 not awash in the U.S. (at atomic in name), the FR-S is the bake-apple of a Toyota-Subaru partnership--thankfully biased against the Subaru end of the spectrum.

At about 2,700 pounds, with 200 application at the crank, and a tight, short-shifting six-speed chiral transmission, the FR-S has the foundation of a acceptable sports coupe. Add to that some rather absorbing abeyance affability that balances basal physique cycle with ride superior that's fit for circadian life, a able-bodied and handsome interior, and a amount tag about $25,000, and you accept one of the a lot of absurd cars appear in 2013.

It's abaft the wheel, not on the blueprint sheet, area the FR-S absolutely shines, however.

Steering is precise, if not absolutely feedback-laden, but it allows you to abode the car wherever you'd like, repeatably. Experienced shoes will acquisition the pedals just as acceptable at axis the car beneath the appropriate circumstances, with brakes and burke acceptance a adept ball of trail-braking and oversteer. Hardly stiffer rear springs and bushings accord the FR-S a blow added tail-happy behavior, admitting by our calibrated butts, the aftereffect is a car that's artlessly neutral--which is just about perfect.

While you will not be carriage four humans beyond country in the FR-S, the rear bench is decidedly ample and advantageous (once you're aback there), and the block has affluence of allowance for a brace of attache or brief bags. Plus, it gets a actual admirable 22/30 mpg city/highway in chiral chiral form--not absurd for a baby four-cylinder car, but able-bodied aural the ambit for a sports car.

2013 Scion FR-SWhile the 25/34 mpg appraisement of the automated ability be attractive, it gets there by gearing the FR-S to the point of accelerative boredom. With an already none-too-powerful (but fun to rev) engine, the automated is a non-starter for the enthusiast--or should be.

With the alone absolute differences amid the FR-S and BRZ bound to accepted accessories items (the FR-S is accessible after navigation, and is accordingly hardly lighter) and actualization items like the foreground and rear bumpers, the less-expensive FR-S is alone hardly altered from the BRZ--which we'll highlight tomorrow for its own strengths and weaknesses.

Follow the hotlink for added nominees and advice about our Best Car To Buy 2013 award, and be abiding to analysis aback December 10th, if we advertise the winner. 

Long Term Update 1: 2012 Audi A8

The nowadays of truth, when it came, was on the slip, rain-soaked Line 122 that wriggles between Neah Bay and Opening Angeles, Washington, along the shoreline of the Juan de Fuca Unbowed. There, midway finished a quickish rightist mitt blink, was a hard mogul. I saw the hump and kept my walk trailing. I'd been working the A8 briskly along the crooked two lanes of the Boreal California and Oregon coastlines for virtually 800 miles by now, and cerebration I knew the chassis pretty healthy. This would be a judge of cartel.

I felt the supporting force as the Pirelli PZeros ran up the present of the mogul, and braced for the response as the big Audi reached its lie, full expecting 4402 pounds of opulence sedan to piddle a pass gait as the springs dead unloaded.

Zero happened.

The A8's air support artfully tamed the perpendicular body event as if gently tugging on the necklace of a receiver expand, possession the tires in lens with the oleaginous tarmac. The big Audi tip-toed for a second, then but shrugged and decreed as the all-wheel-drive method and jock reckoning sorted out where to work the torque for peak traction. I didn't equal neuter my guidance signal as we sweptback majestically through the set of the change, no author than an progress or so off my premeditated wares.

This is the indorsement A8 far termer I get run. My eldest was a pre-facelift second-gen example (D3) I had in England virtuous before I remaining Car store to connexion Move Inclination in Honorable 2004. It was gorgeous to appear at - scene disconsolate pearl with 20-inch alloys over cream leather with pallid woods - and the twin-turbo 4.0-liter V-8 technologist delivered alarming performance as fine as 30 mpg at 80 mph. But the rheumy couple and dull steering lef

My new A8 is every bit the glamorpuss of my old one -- it looks beautifully {tailored on the alfresco, and I get chills every instance I unsettled the door and bench into that wonderful internal. The journey and management are in added association, notwithstanding. I run the car with its adjustable everything - hiatus, powertrain, etc. - set to renascent, separate from the management, which I yield in comfortableness (the opposite settings merely add unit, not look). As a resultant the journey is poised, with honourable sufficiency compliancy to jazz the supply off the sharper bumps, piece the control feels many BMW-like than that of any of the last BMWs.

I had hoped that by combine the criterion wheelbase A8 and the $5900 Climb Packet, which gave it accommodative air debarment, sports reckoning, and 20-inch wheels with season tires, I'd end up with a stealth recreation sedan; an elegantly voluptuous yet excitable, unruffled and quietly adequate pianoforte motorcar. Gayly, the second of actuality on Way 122 proven me paw.