Subaru BRZ leaving so soon?
 

The Subaru BRZ May Be No More! – Insider Car News

I'm not shocked. I'm in that 10% group that was not impressed with the Toyobaru Twins from day one media hype and was less inspired after the FR-S test drive. Subaru expected me to buy one, then test drive. Being that I had to ream this engine out for it to feel just barely fun was the deal-breaker.
They say this car is awesome on the track... I don't know cuz I only had 30 min of street time in the FR-S. But I can assure you they left all the fun for track duty as this well-balanced chassis snoozes along the public road. There's just nothing there unless you floor it right off the line. Do that 3x at each light and lose a third of your tank.
Subaru's mistake. Having no plans to FI this car. Now it's possibly abandoning what was a 3+ year project with Toyota. So Subaru, abandoning this car instead of adding FI and a BBK is about as smart as...
1. Your big buy before test drive policy.
2. Your unrealistic BRZ msrp for a rwd with anemic engine.
3. Adding a wacky-doo CVT to the WRX instead of a JATCO 7AT copy or DCT.

Way to go subie. Awesome business strategy. Lol

I'm willing to bet the head cheeses over at Subaru know a bit more about business strategy than you.

:ugh2:

actually the way i heard it, subaru is getting screwed over basically by toyota as there is talks of toyota teaming up with BMW on all future sports cars thus leaving Subaru high and dry

edit: just read your linked article and it even states in there that toyota is basically abandoning subaru...not really sure where you got the idea that it was subaru's decision to end the BRZ

Yeah but they have just as much right to the chassis as toyota. everyone wants to see this vehicle evolve into something greater. Toyota is going to focus on that Supra. My guess, at best BMW will contribute a better interior and electronic steering.
Subaru just needs to add forced induction get this car to about 280hp. Sell it around $33,000 and keep it real to the fans that waited 3 plus years for the twins. Give test drives so people can gain an interest and they can increase their sales.
the car feels fast only when revving the hell out the low gears, but it handles great. It just needs a great engine. FI will solve this cars problems. Oh and pluck that cvt out the WRX. Please?!

Good business is evolving a good & popular enthusiast platform into a great one. This car didnt impress me. But the list to make it impressive is short.

All that hype and...

Yeah, the next toyota sports car will likely be with bmw.

I like the brz, but I think the wrx is their performance star

Hopefully something better replaces it, tired of the frs/brz fanboys acting like its a lambo though. Especially with how cheap they start off in price and even cheaper used and pretty much for free when salvaged. They're popping up all over socal. I predict the frs/brz will be the new civic/integras/miatas of our generation. In that it will be cheap to buy used, and have a good market to mod. Car looks really nice I will admit, but underpowered. I read some guys comment on another forum and it stuck in my head, he said :

" These cars are underpowered buzz bombs with low end interiors, and handle no better than an otherwise bone stock '82 Z28 equipped with comparable wheels and rubber. The handling aspect is actually a compliment, though that level of handling was much more impressive 32 years ago than it is today." :ugh2:

sadness when a camry blows past your brz/frs "sports car". lol

Or when your track times tied with a $26,000 FWD Civic.:ugh2:

:icon17: but jokes aside, honda knows how to make FWD cars. im not surprised they can make a civic that can take on a brz.

honestly with the civic-r, i would be pretty nervous if there was one tailing me in my Z going through a touge, especially downhill.

i dont think they'll kill it after 2 years still

ewwww bmw :shakes head:

you have to realize too though that one of the reasons they teamed up in the first place was to offset costs, without toyota in the picture and subaru being the much smaller company that it is i doubt they would have the finances to continue making the BRZ or even upgrading it for that matter. that is my take anyway on why they would choose to discontinue the BRZ as it doesnt sell that well anyway to begin with, barely above what the 370Z sells each year, but again...Nissan is a much larger company that can afford to take the hit and make up for it in other areas.

Since when do they try to make you buy before test driving? I had no issues test driving one when I was shopping for my Z.

However I totally agree with the power.... Felt about as fast as my '99 Camry lol

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'

dumbf- mazda with their mazdaspeeds. :shakes head:

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

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 :ugh2: Needless to say I bought from that dealer but NOT from their stock :eekdance: (they did a trade for a car in Georgia)

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?

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

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I never understood dealers not letting ppl test drive those cars. At Porsche they beg you to test drive their cars. Yet I wasn't able to test drive an STi? Wtf? Or maybe they know if you test drive it you'll not want it anymore.

Theyre pretty quick stock too. They will scoot through the 1/4 in mid 13's.

We looked at a new Sky Redline before buying the Z. Car was fun but seriously lacking on the interior. The car was comparable to the Z stock for stock but the inside as opposed to cost I could not get past. The Z was cheaper and nicer all the way around.

Its CLOSE to a Z, stock, in a straight line, thats about it. lol. And yea, the interior is god awful.

wasnt the steering system off a wrx or something on them saturns?

sounds like anyone that touches a subaru fails... lol

To be honest I drop a base model STI two or three weeks ago it only had like the shortshifter installed I think.

after the test drive I was ready to hand in my Z's keys.

now I still don't know what to get;

STI cuz AWD
or challenger SRT8 cuz POWER and V8 noise but it's RWD :shakes head: plus it has an AT

Yeck, neither one. Boy racer vs land yacht.

Dont worry, it is a phase the OP is going through. :roflpuke2:

Just like his balls dropping right after puberty :nutswinger:

What else am I going to get a beamer or grandpa mercedes. :roflpuke2: there is literally nothing interesting to me other than murican or something like the ST/evo. plus as if the Z isn't boy racer/ricer material.

not many interesting cars out there after all the emissions/fuel economy bullcrap happened.

atleast I don't want racing stripes combined with 22 inch rims while slammed as much as possible. also sideways hat.

to be more on topic. to this day I still haven't seen a BRZ on the road. the toyotas are plentifull.