Listen up Toyota... Options

[creamed_corn]

Get up off your conservative butts and make something fun. Right now you're the only car company out there with nothing even remotely sporty in your lineup.

There's a huge HUGE gap in the fun category between the $15,000 tC and the $35,000 IS.

What they need:

-proper two door, rear wheel drive sports car
-starting around $25,500
-2GR-FE plant to the tune of 300-320 horsepower (they'll wanna stay a little bit ahead of the Z and Mustang, knowing them).
-six speed close ratio gearbox, LSD standard, TCS optional
-Keep the weight reasonable at around 3300-3400lbs.
-I'd like to see gas mileage at around 22 city/30 highway. I'm gonna have a hard enough time keeping my foot off the gas as it is.

This is well within their reach and they need to do it. I've been living off my celica for too long. Ever since I got my new job I've been saving my money, just waiting for a car like this. I just can't bring myself to defect to another company, and if this doesn't happen soon, I'm going to be picking up an MR Sypder next summer.

[hitcachi]

I figure that i might add a comment here also.
Take a look at the time period in which the MK4 supra and 6th/7th gen celicas were around. What was happening? The SUV craze of the mid to late 90's. Some very good tuner cars died at that time. Although being extremely popular the first 5 generations, the celica began to lose ground from 93 on up, because there was little intrest in cars of its nature due to the rise of the gas guzzling SUV. Supra sales also slowly melted away. And as for the 7th gen, despite the 2ZZ being a fantastic and (as dan put it) a real high revving performance engine, it was to overpriced and to underpowered. I do believe that right now, we are seeing a resurgence of higher performance cars again. (Mustang, Camaro, Charger, Challenger, 350Z) I think that this COULD have an affect on some decisions being made by car compaines (i.e. Toyota) Now, am I saying that, "By me saying this, Toyota will look at it and make different choices!" No. I am saying that, if you take a look at some recent events, like oil prices now climbing higher then ever thus makin larger vehicles even more impractical, you would see that Toyota, being as smart as they are, definitly sees this also. Now, its just time to be patient.