Is toyota given up on their sport cars??

[silver04rollas]

Originally Posted by toyotaholic

. take the corolla xrs...dont get me wrong, thats a pretty fun car to drive, but you cant just drop an engine and expect it to sell like pancakes. matrix xrs, another fun car to drive but overall nothing spectac. .

Yeah right...

It seems like "dropping an engine" to you since you know very little about the car and are most likely making uneducated guesses. From rims to summer michelin tires, suspension, interior layout, brakes, X-brace and Yamaha strut brace, sway bars there are lots of differences between other Corollas and XRS. I should knows since owned both an 04 S and 05 XRS. It is obvious from the out-of-the-factory 0.85g tested skidpad acceleration and 67 mph slalom speed of the XRS. Higher than most Toyota/Lexus/Scion that came out lately. The reason why XRS was discontined was because 90% of the market buys automatic transmission and XRS had only 6 speed manual with a 4.53 final drive ratio available. Being unbiased, ask any non-Toyota owner, Corollas have an image of bland cars, frugal, point A to B and not a youthful brand like Honda or Nissan. Pick up the age demographics and you will see the overall average Toyota buyer is much older than that of the average Nissan, Mazda or Honda buyer. The XRunner is facing the same dilemma and will be axed soon.

Trying to stay realistic and unbiased because I am Toyota owner, Honda and Mazda are in the same situation where S2000, RSX Type S, Civic Si, Mazdaspeed3 and 6, all fabulous driving experience are not selling more than a handful and not make much profit (if any). The difference is, Honda and Mazda are willing and cares about their brand image to go the distance of caring for the same and loyal less than 10% customer base. For this reason, there are only 250 Mazdaspeed 3 being imported into Canada this year and it is one hell of an awesome car.

Recently, many critics have been bashing Lexus for the IS350 after the arrival of BMW 335 Twin Turbo and the all-new G35 sedan. For the same price, apart from high build quality, similar HP on paper, IS350 just falls pail in front of these cars that offer superior driving experience. C & D in the latest edition said "why in the world would you want to drive an IS350?" . Toyota on the other hand, is driven by net profits, growth, building only cars that selling to the largest target customer base, has been axing all sporty cars since the do not generate any profits and cost more to build. The greatest Toyota Supra was axed for the same reason because the sales volume did not justify it's existence. Why should they really care?? They are making tons of dollars and sales more than anyone else anyway. There is a reason why Toyota's image to the public at large is of a company with high quality, reliability albeit boring and bland cars.