Gregson Mathe
A few weeks ago I posted this thread on Reddit (r/cars sub) to see if anyone was interested in helping me figure out what to do with the Scion FRS that Scion so wonderfully gave us to drive around for a week. Many people responded with some great suggestions, and many with some options that were highly questionable at best. Yet, I entertained them all. I, of course, had the benefit of picking and choosing which ones were actually feasible. Here’s a list of what I could do with as many pictures as I could take/find. Will the FRS Reddit? Is it a viable option for the online enthusiast? Enjoy!
How many cases of wine or beer can you fit in the trunk? (suggested by /u/verdegrrl)
What you are seeing is four boxes of 24, 12oz bottles of delicious beer. A 5th box could have fit in the space in the front left of the picture. If you were going for 30 packs of cans, 6 of them would be able to fit comfortably. Wine boxes were too tall to fit in standing up, but on their side you could fit three boxes of 12 bottles. For alcohol transport, this isn’t a bad hauler.
How fast can it go in reverse? (suggested by /u/TheClerksWell)
There was no picture or video for this as I did not want much evidence (less this post), nor anyone to see where I did it (local, enormous, abandoned parking lot with zero cars or people around for those curious). I got it up to 17mph, but it had the ability to go faster if I had more space. Since reverse is much like 1st gear, it’s finite, but can get a decent amount of speed up. I wouldn’t recommend anyone trying this on anything but an airstrip where there’s less room for error and WAY more space.
How many Swedish Fish fit in the glovebox both with and without the owners manual? (suggested by /u/firstlunch66)
Swedish Fish are a delicious treat for those who have a sweet tooth for sticky, fish-shaped candy. I happen to love them. And if you do too, take solace in the fact that you can transport many pounds of them in your FRS’s glovebox! The bag above is 1.9 pounds. To keep the car in pristine shape, I didn’t empty all the fish into the glove box, but I did let all the air out and see how many would fit.
Yup, that is four full bags of chewy candy goodness packed in there, which is approximately 1395 fish. But like the original question asked, what about the owners manual?
As you can see, there isn’t much room for a third bag in there, but you can still fit two in a pinch. I’d imagine if you emptied the bags out, you’d get many more fishies in there. I’d estimate 2.5 to 3 bags worth.
How many groceries can you fit? (suggested by /u/laxman3737)
This is a great suggestion since most cars on the road are daily drivers and if someone were to choose the FRS as their go to car, it’s important to note if it can handle the most menial of errands: grocery getter.
Thankfully we have an assortment of different grocery stores by us in NJ and my wife and I choose our two go-to grocery stores: Trader Joe’s and Stop & Shop. The Trader Joe’s bag above is a bit too tall for the trunk, but those bags are enormous and fit a ton of stuff in them. You can easily fit a few on the back seats and in the passenger footwell.
Here is $75 worth of groceries from Stop & Shop. As you can plainly see, they fit in there no problem. It’s 5 plastic bags and the pic below shows there is ample room for more bags. I’d estimate you could fit 10 to 15 plastic bags worth of groceries in there.
How fast can you open the trunk with your hands filled with groceries? (suggested by /u/FL1NGP4ND45)
5 seconds. The fob has a trunk release button and if you’re limber enough, you can toss open the trunk with your foot. You hand would probably take you another second or two, but who has time for that?! zero to grocery time is a key factor in buying a car.
How many people fit comfortably? Uncomfortably? (suggested by /u/Clay_Pigeon)
I’ll go into more detail on this one in the full review next week, but two people realistically fit comfortably in this car. The backseats are there for insurance purposes only. Uncomfortably? 10. I was able to squeeze 10 people in there, believe it or not. 5 in back seat stacked lengthwise, 2 driver, 2 passenger, 1 trunk. Trunk won’t fit more than 1 person realistically. So if you’re planning to tie someone up and put them back there to “teach them a lesson about borrowing from [Insert any mob movie reference ever],” this is your machine.
Is the car easy enough to drive to teach someone how to drive manual? (suggested by /u/havokreekr3319)
Plain and simple, yes. I will, again, go into more detail about this in the full review, but the clutch is exceptionally forgiving and the 6-speed is a wonderful learners transmission. Smooth and accurate with a large sweet spot. If you want a manual and you’ve never driven one, get this car, like, yesterday.
How difficult is it to use at a drive through? (suggested by /u/commonplatypus)
Not very, shockingly. The car is very low slung, but I went through 2 drive through lanes and neither posed a problem. The pictures below are taken at eye level.
Really easy and you can get nearly any drive through food you’d like. Eating in the car is also easy and the cup holders on the doors and in the center console can accommodate nearly anything short of a big gulp. Which brings me to the next suggestion.
BONUS DRIVE THRU POINTS: How difficult is it to fish a fry from between the seats? (suggested by /u/commonplatypus)
It’s impossible. The fry wouldn’t even fit between the seat and the console, so I didn’t even attempt to drop one down there. A quarter would fit so if you lose change between the seats whatever coin drops will be lost to the magical land of Narnia.
How well does a child seat fit in the back? (suggested by /u/SaturnSL1)
I unfortunately did not have time to source a child seat, but in the interest of answering the question, as I think it’s an important one, I found 2 pictures via Google images that look to answer it well.
Clearly children can fit in the back with a few different types of child seats and configurations.
Is there anything banana sized in the car? If so, take a picture of the object with it for scale. (suggested by /u/Semperfidelis23)
This was an odd request, but funny enough to me to try it. So, I went to the store, bought a banana, and put it in random places around the car where banana sized objects might be.
Conclusion
Reddit has some totally random ideas, but some of them held a ton of weight. I really enjoyed doing this odd assignment from the users. I don’t plan on doing this for all cars we receive, but this has helped shape some different and interesting criteria that could find its way into future posts (ie, the banana thing will be a staple from now on. Easter egg bonus in the future? I think yes). I hope you all enjoyed this as much as I did. If you don’t see your question here, I’ll most likely be ignoring it (because ridiculous) or it will be tackled in the full review.
Stay tuned for that next week!
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