Subaru BRZ leaving so soon?

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.

__________________
Enjoy it. Destroy it.