Gadgetory

the Scion tC used to be the brand fun little sporty coupe and it still is but in the wake of the rear-wheel drive Scion fr-s it's got more than a few enthusiasts wondering well why would you bother with this front-wheel drive both sports car let's hop behind the wheel of this 2014 model and see if the old girls still got a few thrills left in her now post FRS the Scion tC s had to get a lot more aggressive to keep a tracking eyes so it's gotten a lot more angular that's gonna start around here at the back with this big chunky C pillar and this very angular roofline and it's gonna come straight across to a very flat roof and that front we've got these blacked-out eight pillars that give it sort of a floating roof illusion and visually sort of slim the profile of the car making it look less chunky and more sporty now the 2014 Scion tC doesn't have a ton of options it arrives in its base form with a pretty good cabin tech system in the center of the dashboard here we've got this pioneer head unit that looks suspiciously like something that you'd see in the aftermarket and that's because scions whole push is that they want to make these cars easily upgradable so you could just yank this whole thing out and drop in another system if you so desired if you decided to leave it in there though you wouldn't be too bad off you've got a touchscreen interface with a wide range of digital audio sources including bluetooth for hands-free calling and audio streaming we've also got USB connectivity that's also going to be standard and we've also got am/fm and HD radio very interesting to see HD radio this far down in Toyotas sort of hierarchy we've also got a button format but if you press it it doesn't actually do anything that's because we don't have the optional bespoke audio system now looking at the pictures and the specs online that bespoke audio system looks like this exact same head unit but with the added ability to do GPS navigation with locally stored maps and there is also a bit of app integration through scions application that's gonna let you do internet radio streaming from your Android or iOS device now coming out of the system is a Pioneer stereo system that's got what I count to be about eight speakers scattered around the cabin most of them are going to be right here and front of the vehicle we've got a wolf fur a mid-range and a tweeter in each of the doors sound from the system is gonna be pretty good if we pop into the audio system right here and look at the EQ we've got a couple of different settings natural here and feel feels gonna be more bass heavy here is gonna be a little bit more mid-range and high heavy so that you can actually listen to things like the human voice that are gonna sound a little bitter there and natural is gonna be your flat setting now surrounding this head unit is an interior that a bit cheaply made if not nicely functional but you've got to use a lot of plastic to keep this thing at about twenty thousand dollar price points even though we've got a couple of nice creature comforts like our dual pane sunroof which is really nice it sort of lighting up and making this really kind of dark cabin feel a little bit more Airy as you drive there's also a little bit of weirdness for example the air vent up here are rectangular lis shaped but that one over there on the passenger side is round it just looks odd and out of place doesn't match the rest of the cabin there's also a couple of signs of scion cutting corners to keep the cost down for example this vehicle doesn't even come standard with daytime running lights now behind one of the more attractive front ends and all of Toyota dome will find Toyota and scions 2.5 litre four-cylinder engine now that's gonna use direct injection to get you about 179 horsepower and 175 pound feet of torque not bad for a coupe that weighs about 3,100 pounds that's gonna be paired with a six-speed manual transmission or as in this case a six-speed automatic putting power to the front wheels and the EPA estimates that you're gonna get with the automatic about 23 miles per gallon in the city and 31 on the highway I've been getting about 25 during my testing which is in line with those EPA estimates now as I said earlier 179 horsepower 175 pound feet of torque if nothing to thumb your nose at in the car sighs the Scion tC has really good initial tip-in on the throttle the first couple of times I've pulled away from a traffic light in this car I just kind of shut off way faster than I thought I would part of that's do I think to the weird pedal placement which means that I end up stepping down on the pedal more than stepping into it which is making it a little bit odd to modulate but there's just really good torque from this engine now when you get up to speed this automatic transmission does kind of let you down a little bit there's a little bit too quick to jump up through the gears and it's a little bit too sort of hesitant fortunately there is a sport mode you flop the shifter over into the sport mode and things get a little bit more aggressive the computer tends to hold its gears a little bit longer and choose lower gear that you have better access to your throttle response keeping the engine more alive if you drive around the sport mode is also technically a manual shift mode you can push forward to upshift pull back to downshift being able to manually shift your gears means that you can have a little bit of fun with this car and one of the great things about this TC is its suspension setup is pretty good for a car in this price range the 2014 Scion tC in typical Scion fashion is very easy to price there aren't a whole lot of options that aren't dealer installed wheels or stickers this one's gonna start at about just shy of $20,000 for the manual transmission version but our six-speed automatic equipped version is gonna be twenty thousand nine hundred and sixty-five bucks that's gonna include your destination and everything if the price out of the door there's only one option that you should really care about and that's the bespoke audio system and at 1198 dollars that's going to add navigation and be priced pretty competitively with aftermarket systems so go ahead and shop around before you check that box