Bimmer-Bob

Nevermind.

Well, I'll admit that Toyota's sporting efforts have often been thwarted by bad marketing and/or unfavorable market conditions, but I would never say that they couldn't build 'em. And with BMW as a partner, I'm interested to see the results. Of course, there's a lot that has to happen for this thing to become a reality - but if it did, I'm sure it would at least be an interesting exercise in engineering.

That seems like an odd way of looking at things. Why does it have to survive for 2 or 3 generations to be considered successful? It's successful if it makes money, period. It can be a critical success even if it doesn't make money, and even if it only gets built for a single model year. Those that think that Toyota has no heritage of building good sports cars have short memories. Not to mention the brand new FR-S, which is impressing lots of reviewers. SMH at this thread...

That RS was featured in Jalopnik a couple years back. US buyer went down to Mexico (Monterrey, I think) and drove it home to Chicago.

I don't know, I know the Koreans are the big thing right now, but I find all their designs so derivative. If I didn't know any better, I'd think this was a new Civic. Kia is worse with their design. They have a flagship car coming out that I swear looks just like a BMW. They're not as bad as Chinese makers, who often copy other vehicles outright, but I still can't shake the feeling that the Koreans are just good imitators. What's going to happen when they need to start setting the benchmarks without a competitor to aim for?

Yeah, it's not on the window stickers, but it's on Etis. Lots of stuff isn't on the window stickers, though. Of course, Etis may or may not be accurate for US builds (totally different debate) but I've read several threads where SE Sport owners have physically checked the part numbers on their dampers and cross checked with the Ford Parts site to confirm the presence of "touring suspension" components. I'm still waiting on delivery of my 2012 and will be happy to report back here with results when I get mine. Of course, none of this is to say that the 2013's won't be shipping with three different levels of suspension tuning as well (standard, touring, and handling). We just won't know until the fall.

Actually, there is a suspension upgrade on the SE Sport (same as on stock Titanium). It's pretty well documented. Of course no one is "forgetting about the ST." The point is that Ford was supporting an entry-level trim with an enthusiast-marketed package. For most of the 2012 production run, the SE Sport was the only way to get both a manual transmission and sport-tuned suspension in the same car. The fact that the combo was well under $20k was nice, too.