The sports car that Toyota has been teasing the masses with for the better part of 2011 has had a steady presence on Facebook since October 19. The FT-86 II, or Scion FR-S as it's to be called in the United States, is the showpiece in this case, thanks to a social media campaign that allows Facebook users to race it in a 3D game, with an unusual iPhone app to boot.
The Social Network Racer –apps.facebook.com/socialnetworkracer – is effectively a Flash-based game that puts you in the driver's seat of the FT-86 II on a course that is custom designed based on your Facebook profile's content (friends, photos, "liked" pages, etc.), meaning that billboards and skyscrapers are plastered with them. It's a bit odd to see a recent status update beam off of a billboard, followed by a profile picture of someone I haven't actually conversed with in years, but the content is randomly thrown in.
The shameless promotion of the vehicle, which is unseen because the racing view is entirely in the first-person bumper view, is yet another cog in the social media wheel for Toyota this year. After riding a wave of positive feelings at the expense of the Big Three wobbling in the wake of the financial crisis, Toyota's image has taken a beating for a number of recalls since January, 2010.
At the time, the auto maker was trending on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Digg for all the wrong reasons. Had Toyota not put together a true social media team months earlier, the crisis may have been far more damaging than it turned out to be. Putting executives out in the open to respond to questions on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook helped establish a dialogue between them and their irate customers.
The damage control has since led to a sustained campaign of social media interaction that includes the Social Network Racer as its latest brainchild — a novel concept for Facebook, particularly because it's also among the first games to use Adobe Flash Player 11 and its 3D accelerated graphics. For a game played within a web browser, it looks pretty slick.
But it's by no means refined. The controls are as basic as using the arrow keys to accelerate, turn, brake and drift. And because there is no cockpit or third-party view, it's a lot like playing a shooter game without seeing the gun. Plus, if you're looking to see how the car truly handles, you'll be disappointed at the lack of variety in controls.
To hammer the point home, they've even gone as far as promoting an iPhone app, FT-86 World Report, whereby you can take photos or video and use those images as backdrops when placing an image of the car inside. Your final image can then be posted on a website devoted to the car.
Why all the hype for a sports car that some pundits consider too limited under the hood? Maybe the FT-86 II (Scion FR-S) has been a social media experiment all along to get Toyota firmly back into consumers' good graces.
Or maybe it's just the way auto makers will be pumping the tires of their cars before they even hit a showroom.