Driving Toyota's Pro/Celebrity Scion FR-S race cars

At the Streets of Willow Springs, there's a back straightaway that crests over a downhill and into a series of sudden, unsettling left turns. It's one of the most dramatic parts of the track, one that always trips up timid run groups. And as it turns out, heading blindly at 90 miles per hour, skimming the cones of the artificial chicane normally designed to slow lesser drivers who aren't Formula Drift prodigy Ken Gushi, will really put the fear of mortality into anyone who's signed up to ride shotgun -- especially when the car is the brand-new Scion FR-S race car for Toyota's Pro/Celebrity Race Series, here on its first outing.

Don't break it -- someone famous needs to drive it.

Toyota launched the Pro/Celebrity Race in 1977 alongside the Grand Prix of Long Beach. There are two classes, celebrities and professional drivers, who race the 2-mile Grand Prix street course for 10 laps. Pro drivers are in red cars; celebrities in blue, white or silver. San Diego Chargers wide receiver Shelly Novack won the first event, while Sam Posey won in the Pro class. Over the years, the list of celebrities has included Keanu Reeves, Buzz Aldrin, Cameron Diaz, Goldberg, Ingo Rademacher (who played Jasper "Jax" Jacks on General Hospital, in case you weren't aware), and John Elway, which coincides nicely with his Manhattan Beach Toyota dealership. Bruce Jenner won it twice. (Son Brody raced last year but finished midpack.) Jason Bateman won it at the tender age of 18. Both Lorenzo Lamas and Donny Osmond tried their hands at professional racing after participating in the series. Father and son James and Josh Brolin won it in 1978 and 2000, respectively, which must lead to fun reminiscing at Thanksgiving. Frankie Muniz won in 2005, a victory undoubtedly spurred by his purchase of the Volkswagen Jetta from "The Fast and the Furious."

Each entrant gets a charity of their choice that receives a donation if they win, and Toyota makes a contribution itself. Toyota's charity of choice is "Racing for Kids," which arranges visits from racing drivers to children's hospitals and is expected to take in more than $100,000 in donations.

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Glam studio show reveals little interior mods.

Chuck Wade is the director of Toyota's Motorsports Garage, a jack of all trades for the company's various racing projects. They hired him for design and engineering "but I'm a damn good mechanic and a damn good fabricator," he informs us with an air of authority. He works on anything within Toyota's skunkworks engineering department -- projects as diverse as SEMA show cars and restoring vehicles for the Toyota Museum, even pushing a Prius to a hybrid land speed record at Bonneville. The Celebrity race cars are his specialty, something he's been doing since 1996.

The challenge Wade faces is tailoring the FR-S to celebrities of all backgrounds and driving records. He rattles off a list of past luminaries. "We designed this car for Lil' Kim, Al Unser Jr., Mary Lou Retton, John Salley."

Lil' Kim, for example: "Never drove a car. Grew up in New York City. Then you get powerful, come out here and someone drives you around." Wade instructed her for the series. "She did a damn good job. To have someone who's never driven a car before…we get guys who have never driven stick shifts. We have to design this car for everyone."

"Do you expect carnage?" One reporter asked.

"Yes," Wade explained. "These celebrities, they flail around a lot…so, uh, we disconnected the windshield wipers."

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Accesorize your ride! Accessorize your life!

The FR-S Celebrity car serves as a rolling advertorial for TRD's rapidly expanding FR-S catalog. The engine is completely stock, save for a TRD cold air intake. A bolt-on TRD exhaust rounds out the back, but the midpipe is custom Toyota: a straight pipe with no resonators anywhere and no second catalytic converter. It's purely to sound mean as the cars fly down Shoreline Drive. The cars run on 100-octane race fuel -- there's no performance gain, but it levels out the knock sensors for even running. All together, the exhaust and intake add 11 to 12 horsepower -- "but we just say 10," smiled Wade.

The interior is gutted for the most part, and Wade's team fabricated an axle-to-axle roll cage that's beautifully integrated into the headliner. Not much else is needed, not even door bars. "We found that the stock car crashes damn good. We want to keep that."

Brakes are slotted 328mm rotors balanced by larger TRD 4-piston calipers up front, stock brakes in the rear, and Hawk DTC-60 track-only pads on all four corners. TRD would like to make the larger calipers available on the market, but like many of the parts on the car, it's still undergoing stringent development and certification. Bolt-on brakes are coming soon, Wade swears, as a direct bolt-on that even retains the backing plate.

The overall result is a mishmash of TRD accessories and custom engineering, undertaken by Wade and his small team of 3. (The TRD sway bars, for example, are off-the shelf but attached via custom end links.) One part that won't ever make it to production, however, is the trick suspension: custom-built by Eibach, they're beautiful slim, shiny, red-springed units with adjustable height, but that's about it -- Toyota found that the drivers in the Pro class were bringing their own mechanics to perform their best Smokey Yunick impression. Want a set of your own? Wade is here to dash your dreams: "they'll never be marketed by TRD." Instead, there will be lowering springs available; expect a drop of 1-2 inches. The speed bumps of Los Angeles will remain unfazed.

In fact, the FR-S is slower than the Scion tC coupes that were fielded last year—because those cars had TRD centrifugal superchargers, and "people were going 140 miles per hour down the back straight," said Wade. "The engineers wanted to dial that back a little so it wouldn't get ugly. The FR-Ss should do about 120, 125 instead. Much safer."

Safer still, without windshield wipers.

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When he's not driving, Ken Gushi likes jumping over his cars.

We strapped ourselves into the bright red Simpson five-point harnesses. Wrapped around the 18-inch TRD wheels are 225-series Bridgestone Potenza RE-11 tires (215 up front) -- and here, on track at Willow Springs, they make a world of difference. Where the stock car grips adequately on canyon sweepers, the demanding surface of the track requires all the grip a driver can provide. Here the FR-S is balanced, eminently controllable -- the rear end feels like it will slide out, but it's very easy to ease it back into place.

Amateurs will love it. We did.

The exhaust also sounds like no factory-approved FR-S ever will, an undeniable rasp that rises above the boom like Tom Waits gargling bumblebees. Even the shifter felt more precise; we had to ask whether the TRD quick shifter had been installed. Nope: that's all natural, baby.

We drove steadily but conservatively, keeping in mind Scion's earlier warning about getting a wheel off. (One word: "don't.") Afterwards, we hitched a ride with Ken Gushi: past Formula Drift champion, real-life Takumi, resident Toyota hot-shoe. He won the Pro class in 2011. And underneath his carbon fiber helmet we could tell that he wanted desperately to produce a "dab of oppo," as some say -- perhaps a big smoky tail-happy arc all the way around Willow's big 20-degree banked corner.

No, Gushi was in full time-attack mode: hard braking, stomping on the throttle, what seemed to be little finesse on the surface but was undoubtedly full of careful inputs. He took his apexes late -- like a drifter's line, as if he would correct for this late entry by swinging the rear wide. Almost like cheating. At two occasions he dipped a wheel juuust off the edge of the pavement, the control arm banging against the cracked asphalt. He swore, audibly.

"That Ken really likes to late brake," a fellow journalist observed after we got out of the car.

Gushi gave Toyota input on developing the FR-S. And while it may not be up to par with what he races in Formula Drift -- a Cosworth-built turbocharged Scion FR-S with 540 horsepower -- it's sharp, fun, and will look good screaming down Long Beach on April 20. As long as the celebrities don't flail around too much.

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