Quote:
Originally Posted by industrial
The WRX is heavily compromised. I'm not sure you understand the meaning of that word used in this context. Let's think about this. It is a car that can haul a family, drive through snow and get good gas mileage all for under $25k. Every single one of those things could be sacrificed for a better sports car. Imagine a 2 seater RWD WRX without all the practical DD crap (4 doors, trunk space, etc) and wannabe luxury crap (moonroof, leather, sound deadening, etc). That would probably be 800#s lighter, louder and FAR more fun to drive. Sounds exactly like my BRZ with FI.
Also, track prepping a BRZ is really as simple as camber bolts, thicker oil and better brake pads/fluid for most of us. Maybe wheels, tires and oil coolers. You don't need to do anything else, it's very much like the STI in that way for $10,000 less.
People do crazy things to wrxs, stis, m3s, gtrs and sell them too. Look at the nasioc classifieds. There is a 530WHP fully built and track prepped sti for sale for 25k on the first page. There are always cars with crazy blood, sweat and money spent being sold for peanuts. This insanity occurs everywhere in the car modding community. Why do people do this? Because we all are brain washed consumers that need to consume more and more. Better and faster and shinier and etc. Hedonic adaptation.
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So the GTR is compromised because it is AWD? What about the Evo? Porsche Carrera? Golf R? A car does not have to be RWD. In fact many people prefer the Fiesta ST which is FWD vs the twins for fun factor.
At any rate, all economy based sporty cars are going to have compromises. Of course the WRX does as it is going to be heavier and larger than say a Lotus Elise. But the twins are far from not being compromised either. Day one the power displacement was a compromise. And yes, you can spend a ton of money modifying the car to give it much better performance, but at that point you can get yourself in a much faster car that is stock. The upcoming Miata ND is going to be significantly lighter than the twins, does that make the FR-S/BRZ compromised too?
The twins are really fun cars, and I agree are inexpensive to track. But the premise that it is cheap and easy to add power is somewhat misleading. I followed Dezoris from day one and I felt he was one of the more honest people here when discussing modifications in terms of time, money, and pain points. I suspect this one of the reasons why you see so many modified twins being sold, some of them with very low miles and heavily modified less than a year.
I love fun RWD cars. I would love to add an S2K, Miata, twin to my garage again at some point, but I view these types of cars as toys that will simply get driven much less than say a WRX because they are very impractical where I live, and especially since I have a family.