I test drove the tC when looking at the Civic, it feels substantially bigger than the 7th gen coupes (at least in interior space), the steering feel wasn't that great and the handling was just okay. Some of the interior plastics looked pretty gay too.

It's a unique looking car with good feature for the dollar content, and it has 160HP which is a lot for the class in which it competes in, so it sells.

As for the "New AE86", keeping it to 2200 pounds, even if the car is totally stripped in content, is pretty tough to do and still meet US safety features. At $12,000, there isn't going to be a whole lot of aluminum that they can afford to use.

But it'd be nice to see Toyota prove me wrong.