Five years and 50,000 miles in the making, this critique of the 2016 Scion FR-S (aka Subaru BRZ or Toyota 86) puts the long in longitudinal review! Cohosts Eric Penn and Ryan Malcolm return to help Tim discuss the complete customer experience with the car from encounter, to decision, to purchase, to initial use, to longitudinal reflection.
The “Toyobaru” is in our opinion one of the most successful user-centered car designs we’ve ever experienced. Toyota and Subaru aimed this car at a finely focused customer base and created something with an enthusiastic following and enough sales to continue the model into a second generation. It never tries to be all things to all people. Rather, it creates passion and loyalty in its customers’ hearts by focusing tightly on what they value in a small, lightweight, rear wheel drive sports car that is affordable.
This episode is way longer than usual at 100 minutes, so here are the segment timings:
00:00-51:00 Encounter, Decision, Purchase, Initial Use
51:00-1:07:34 Longitudinal Use and Final Year
1:07:35-1:21:19 Second Generation Improvements
1:21:20-1:40:33 Special Guest and Conclusion

A design this pure, with a customer profile so well-defined, is proof that large corporations can delight customers if an executive champion and a dedicated team work in concert to achieve their customer-centric goal.

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