The seller of today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe FR-S describes it as “enthusiast owned.” Let’s see if this former aftermarket parts company tester can get any enthusiasm over its asking price.
In Pixar’s Toy Story franchise, the main character, Woody is a cowboy toy whose most famous voice-box phrase is “there’s a snake in my boot!” Last Friday’s 1989 Ford Ranger was not a cowboy—although cowboys do love themselves some pick-em-up trucks. It did, however, have a snake under its hood. That was a built 302 V8, late of a Mustang Cobra and which most likely imbued the truck with more power than its lightly loaded back end could handle.
Few of you could handle its $18,000 asking price either, with comments ranging from that being too much for someone else’s project to complaints about the aftermarket gauges trim not matching between the binnacle and A-pillar placements. In the end, all that conflated into a 77 percent Crack Pipe loss, making the Ranger a High-no, Silver.
Do you remember Scion? That was the brand Toyota created to capture a younger market block after discovering that their main Toyota brand had gone all AARP. The thing of it was, Scion attracted those same oldsters, just at a lower profit margin. With the experiment deemed a failure, Toyota folded the Scion tent and absorbed several of the sub-brand’s models into their own lineup. One of those is the car Toyota currently sells as the 86, but which was once the Scion FR-S and which has always been… well, a Subaru. Yeah, you kind of need a playbook to keep up with Toyota these days.
This 2013 Scion FR-S represents from the dead brand’s era but has been given new life by way of a number of aftermarket upgrades, including a Jackson Racing supercharger for its 2-litre Subaru pancake four. The stock mill put out 200 horsepower and Jackson Racing makes the claim that the kit adds another 100 to that.
Other updates include an add-on oil cooler, aftermarket headers, strut tower and A-pillar braces, as well as updated shifter bushings for improved action.
The ECU has been re-tuned to acknowledge what the blower brings to the table, and the whole thing is said to have been accomplished as a development car for a place called System Motorsport. There’s even a build thread over on the FT86Club forum, although it looks like a good bit of the work has been backed off prior to the car being put on the market.
Now it sits with the above-noted mods and just 45K on the clock. The Raven Black paint looks to be in reasonably good condition, as do the factory wheels. There’s none of that crazy Akira anime-style bodywork that’s popular on these cars here, and only the Subaru BRZ headlamps and phat exhaust let on that it’s a modded car.
The interior presents likewise, although the tower brace and dashboard script for what looks to be the tuner shop do announce the intentions under the hood.
There you’ll find a fairly tidy installation of the Rotrex centrifugal blower. An air-to-air intercooler sits down out of the way and, save for the obvious open air filter, it all looks almost factory. The seller notes that the install is CARB legal, with an E.O. number as proof. That should make future smog tests less of a white knuckler, which makes for less trepidation in buying the pre-modded car.
With so little mileage you might think this to have been a garage queen. That’s seemingly not the case, however, as the ad claims that 25K of the car’s 45K total were added in the last three years. Today, the car is said to be in “Great running condition” and has a clean and clear title.
As it sits, the car asks $15,800 and when you consider that the supercharger kit individually would set you back over a third of that for the parts alone, you might start to get interested. How interested we’ll just have to see.
What’s your take on this blown bad boy from a bygone brand? Is that $15,800 a fair price to take the plunge into “someone else’s project?” Or, is this enthusiast-owned FR-S just too modded to garner any fandom for that price?
You decide!
San Francisco Bay Area, CA Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to Lawrence W. for the hookup!
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