Subaru BRZ leaving so soon?

Jordo!

Eh, the car will live on -- those two had a real Camaro/Firebird relationship anyway. Even more alike, actually. Same car, different bumpers.

I'm excited by this tidbit tho'

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kenchan

dumbf- mazda with their mazdaspeeds.

i cracked up when the salesman said that to me. went to another dealership to test drive,
only to decide AGAINST buying that pos.

brancky3

Yea that's ridiculous.... when I walked into the Nissan dealer they did everything short of paying me to take a 2014 Nismo out for a drive. Then they told me I didn't drive it hard enough when they asked how many times I hit redline Needless to say I bought from that dealer but NOT from their stock (they did a trade for a car in Georgia)

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Jordo!

That is sad.

When the FRS/BRZ came out and all the specs were released, I was disappointed to find that the twins' performance metrics were all about on par with various FWD hothatches built 10+ years earlier.

Sadder still to learn it cannot out pace the newer ones, and is frequently crushed by them.

How much better would that car have been with at least a factory turbo or S/C option?

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Z_ealot

i have a feeling it was the penny pinchers at toyota that had alot to do with that as when you look at the rest of subaru's lineup, pretty much everything is turbocharged...probably someone at toyota worried about their fleetwide fuel economy taking a hit lol

Zteven

Pretty sure Subaru actually had a bad *** business plan, they reeled in a slew of new bright eyed customers by selling a bunch of those crappy frs/brz's with Toyota being dumb enough to keep the engine branded as a Subaru so now people figure wow if Toyota is proudly carrying a Subaru engine it must be good / reliable. Now within a couple years they will branch off from Toyota and those hooked on that market will have nowhere to turn but Subaru since Toyota will no longer be carrying that model. Then Subaru swoops in keeping the rwd platform and introduces a turbo or sti version and people will go nuts for it. I severely doubt BMW would be able to provide much for Toyota I can't even imagine a collaboration between the two they are entirely different animals. Toyota gets left in the dust here...

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UNKNOWN_370

Maybe? But R&D is done and 2 years of production already happened. They nearly doubled the sales they expected the first year and are above average this year. they can run this platform one more year making wheel improvements for 2015, then year 16 for at a turbo. I'm sure but their experience with forced induction, it wouldn't be a high cost / high R&D issue.

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Favorite Quote.
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UNKNOWN_370

So the real question is...

Is the Civic that good, or is the FRS that bad?

My guess is that the Twins have more work to be done. They should have been able to pull off a one-second win at minimum.

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Favorite Quote.
"I'm not gonna kill you... I'm just gonna Bash Your Face In" Jack Nicholson-"The Shining". 1980

Jordo!

Other FWD hot hatches have blown away the 86 too. I think it's just that FWD cars have always been capable of matching RWD cars in performance with some tweaking, but now they roll off the assembly lines much better sorted than they used to.

FF cars are usually light and relatively nimble. The biggest issues have always been torque steer if over powered and massive understeer.

Set the car up correctly, and tune the transaxle to put the power down with stability control, and you've got a car that at worst just has to overcome physics in straight-line acceleration. Set the weight transfer right, and you can mitigate that too.

Then all that's left is the stigma of imagined "un-sportyness"

Put another way, a FR setup has a lot going for it, but on its own, it is nothing special.

So, yeah, the Civic Si is an excellent, sporty FF and the twins are poorly set-up FR's.

A FR without enough torque to get out of it's own way and an add campaign that emphasizes sliding around on skinny tires and "feel" over performance: Why?

They should have made the car with better low end grunt, even a the cost of some top end, to capitalize on the FR set-up -- that single change would have transformed the vehicle into something entirely better.

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Magic Bus

The Toyota/Scion distribution channels is a lot larger than the Subaru network. Plus add in a lower starting retail price for the Scion and it's no wonder Scion is dominating.

I think Subaru had a two year sales plan from the beginning for the BRZ. Meaning, we'll see how it sells through our own distribution channel first. If it does well, great. If it doesn't do well, we'll just scrap our sales portion and continue to manufacter the engine and tons of other components for Toyota.

Subaru, is almost in a no lose situation. If the FRS sells well (which it has) they make money from manufaturing. If the BRZ had sold more, they would have made money both ways.

I'm not feeling sorry for Subaru.

kenchan

civic si is very predictable so it is easy to go fast through the turns.

and if the civic-r is even better than the si, then one would have to be an extremely good driver in a brz/frs to beat it.

Davey

It's an OK car overall but that motor... Ugh. I'm so tired of old guys who should have bought Miatas saying it has "enough" power.

It's kind of a stupid car, it costs as much as a Miata, it's as fast as a Miata (i.e. slow), and handles similarly, but the top doesn't go down, and it has 2 seats you can't really use. If I'm going to have something that impractical, it better have at least 250 HP and be fun in a straight line, too - or at least have a convertible top.

Tazicon

Sad that I can go over and test drive a $130k 911 Turbo Porsche yet Subaru is not going to let me drive their BRZ. I did test drive the FRS a couple of times and I have stated my peace. BRZ STi would have been a great vehicle. Looks like that one we will not be seeing. Oh well the FRS can be modified into a beast.

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falconfixer

I wonder if these 2 will go the way of the Pontiac Solstice/Saturn Sky. I don't know much about them but weren't they a niche car for a few years and at the end they dropped a turbo in them? I stopped to look at a few used just for a toy and they are still getting top dollar in my neck of the woods for an unmolested version.

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Bitch ex wife's scumbag lawyer made sure this went away.

Z_ealot

that would be the solstice GXP and Sky redline you are talking about and yes, they did drop a turbocharged 2.0 litre engine into them which was being used in the Cobalt SS before that....those motors are no joke when they are tuned, im talking about 300hp to the wheels with a good tune and supporting mods.