2011 Scion tC

2011 Scion tC 2011 Scion tC
First Drive Review

Every piece of sheetmetal on the 2011 Scion tC may be new, but the car’s striking similarity to its predecessor is proof of old thinking at Toyota: We have a sales winner—don’t mess with it.

And they didn’t, very much. It’s basically the same bobtailed-hatchback, front-drive, five-seat coupe as before, although it’s now loaded with standard goodies such as 18-inch wheels and a sunroof, and the new tC looks a little more muscular, especially around the hindquarters. It has a new 2.5-liter four mated to a six-speed manual for $18,995 or, for another $1000, a six-speed automatic; a redesigned instrument panel; and perhaps most important for Scion buyers, several new glass-rattling stereo options.

Too Conservative?

Launched in 2002, Scion was supposed to be Toyota’s youth laboratory, distinct from its graying parent in its willingness to take chances and bring forth daring new products such as the original refrigerator-shaped xB. Somewhere along the line, however, Scion’s role split. It became only partly a laboratory—it’s introducing the quirky iQ minicar to the U.S. later this year—and partly an incremental volume producer for Toyota. The latter role, last seen being played by Oldsmobile and Plymouth, is much more mundane and forced Scion to be too conservative (is that what tC stands for?) when it came time to redesign the brand’s bestseller.

The tC has been a reliable haymaker for Scion, even as the brand’s sales have plunged with the economy, from 113,904 in 2008 to 57,961 last year, when the tC represented 31 percent of Scion’s volume. At times, it has been more than 40 percent. At the 2006 New York auto show, Scion hinted at big changes for the tC when it showed the beefy, robotically faced Fuse concept. But the concept didn’t do well in clinics, says Scion vice-president Jack Hollis. Not wanting to kill off a cash cow, the company did almost a complete retreat, settling for some mild amendments to the old tC’s basic shape and package.

To be sure, the platform underneath, derived from the European-market Avensis sedan (and U.S. Lexus HS250h), changes little, which forced the designers to work with the old platform’s immovable hard points. The tC’s 106.3-inch wheelbase and 174.0-inch overall length remain the same, as does the front-strut, rear-multilink suspension layout, although wheel track and overall width rise slightly with the puffing out of the fenders and the more broad-shouldered road stance.

Make It Manly, Man

With the redesign, Scion hopes to bring in more male buyers. The tC’s male-to-female ratio is currently 50/50, but Scion hopes to move it to 60-percent male. Hollis says the old car is perceived to be slightly soft and effeminate, so the new one is beefed up with more angularity and body sinew. It’s a logical move. Sales trends prove that women will buy guy-oriented cars but not vice versa.

The cockpit is a new design that sinks the gauges into two deeply recessed tubes, instead of the three blisters from before, and orients the all-important stereo-and-navigation unit toward the driver. The steering wheel is important to tC buyers, says Hollis, so it got a lot of attention. An extra-thick rim with a racing-style flat bottom rings a hub and spokes brightened by titanium-hued plastic accents and fitted with audio-control buttons.

Overall, the forms inside are taller, sharper, and intentionally more masculine. As before, the cabin has been done to a price, with hard plastics of various textures comprising the instrument panel and door skins. But the deeply bolstered front buckets still supply good support, and the rear seats are cavernous, owing to the long wheelbase, with a reclining feature that ensures fewer complaints from the back.

Across its small-car line, Toyota has been phasing out the old Z-series 2.4-liter four-cylinder for the new R-series 2.5, which features refinements such as dual cam phasing, roller-rocker lifters, oil-jet cooling of the pistons, and tumble control valves in the intake for better intake-charge mixing and lower emissions. Horsepower is up by 19 to 180 hp, and torque rises by 11 lb-ft to 173. Meanwhile, the move from a four-speed automatic and five-speed manual to a pair of six-speed boxes means better fuel economy. Manual-equipped tCs go from 20 mpg city and 27 mpg highway to 23/31, and the automatic gets the same, rising from 21/29 in the old car.

Decent to Drive

On our drive, the steering and the suspension proved to be on the firm side. The tC cuts a tight, concise path through corners and resists your palm motions with more manly weighting than in your typical Toyota. The new steering wheel feels great—a big ring to sink your fingers into. There’s not much body lean or bob, either, which is nice in a sporty coupe. However, rotten street surfaces extract their payment from the chassis and 225/45 tires in the form of some jiggles and the occasional jarring thump.

Scion claims a shorter intake and a retuned exhaust have perked up the tC’s voice, but if they have, the changes made no impression on us. The engine sounds willingly efficient and pulls hard and smooth to its 6200-rpm redline, but a Honda in full VTEC fury still sounds better. Larger brakes do what larger brakes do: They stop better, or at least feel as if they were stopping better, with a pedal that is solid and strong.

If one judges by the marketing guff, Scions aren’t so much cars as rolling stereo delivery devices. The new tC has a standard eight-speaker, tweeter, woofer battery that borrows bits from the Lexus LX570. The upgrade option, a 340-watt max-power Alpine unit with a 4.3-inch touchscreen, looks deliberately aftermarket with its metallic-like knobs and microscopic buttons. A navigation module can be added to that Alpine unit, and Scion offers another navigation head unit with a seven-inch touchscreen. USB and AUX ports are standard.

Hollis drew a snicker from this reporter when he loudly proclaimed at the tC’s press conference that “we’re not mainstream!” History indicates that the more forcefully a car company declares it is not mainstream, the less likely that is to be true. By fearing to evolve the bestselling tC into something more unexpected, Scion proves that, in this case, it’s quite happy to stay right in the middle of the stream.