That would be ome awfully poor engineering on subarus part to need an extra gear shift to hit a benchmark acceleration figure. Its only a 2mph difference.

Motor trend clocked 6.5 seconds for the 2012 camry hybrid. Hybrid! As in maximum economy vehicle. A mazda 6 and a nissan altima are also in the low to mid 6 range. A mt accord coupe can hit 60 in 5.9 seconds.

The Camry Hybrid has a 105kW electric motor, nothing to scoff at!

And let's not forget Motortrend said this car was estimated 6.2s. Has anyone actually been able to time this car?

What do you mean awfully poor engineering? The benchmark itself is stupid. It's already been calculated that the car can't hit 62 in 2nd gear I'm pretty sure.

Want sure, need no. Unless you are towing/hauling something there is no need for a big capacity engine.
I sure would like a 997 911 GT3 RS. Do I need that power, no, not in the least.
The FRS/BRZ does not need more power to get people from point A to B to C and down to Z.

You like alotta oomph. Great, we all like different things. But to make out like driving is a tedious, endless slog without a large capacity engine in a car is plain wrong.

Check the ratio of 2nd gear and use the 4.1 rear end to calculate speed: 95KPH at 7500RPM. This is with 215/24/17 tires.

Multiple times.

I asked this question to my friend a few weeks ago:

How fast, percentage wise (out of all of the cars/trucks on the road), is say, my Civic SI, 0-60?

Now I know the time is mid to low 7s. So what, 90% faster than all of the cars on the road? 70% 95%? 60%?

Then I found this:

http://image.motortrend.com/f/roadte...tion-graph.jpg

It's all of the cars motortrend has tested in the past 5 years. The average age of cars on the road today is 10.8 years, moving that meaty part of the curve over a bit to the right.

Meaning, (I don't know the exact percentage, I'd still like to know) 6.5 is plenty fast especially vs all the cars on the road.

But truth be told if I wanted to maximize my fun I would obviously buy an Accord Hybrid. . .

Can't use that graph, because although relatively few models of cars are slower than the mode, the slower cars are by far the most common on the road. Don't worry about it, I'd say 95% of the cars I see on the road are basic Camry/Accord/Civic/Corolla/Focus/minivans/trucks, which are all slow.

I find it funny that so many people were eating this guy alive for creating another thread for something that's already been answered. One would think that someone would just say search, or find a link to the info and then the thread would have ended. There are now 7 pages and 128 posts of shit that might not have anything to do with the original question. :clap:

a large number of the threads on the site are just like this. People get off on a tangent that has little or nothing to do with the title. The pricing info thread is talking about tire diameters to figure out if the car can hit 62 mph in 2nd gear.

This car fits well in Japan where small is good and there are tons of twisty mountain roads to enjoy the handling on. In most of US most of the turns you will be making will be 90 degree ones at the end of a long straight.

I spend my daily drive either stuck in traffic going 5-15mph or cruising along at 70-80. I make a total of 3 left turns and 3 right turns through 19 miles of driving each way. While in theory a great handling car would be fun to drive I think I get very little chance to enjoy the handling. In the mean time I have to merge at least three times onto highway traffic where no one gives you a break. When the lady in the Explorer accelerates to snuff me while I try to merge on I do appreciate having enough power to get to speed faster and not get squeezed onto the shoulder while trying to hit 50mph.

Different situation for different people but in my case I do appreciate the power my cars have. In that light I personally would prefer this car to have more power. If it was 2200lbs then 200hp is great. 2800lbs not so much. That being said it is also not terribly bad either.

Unfortunately I don't have the time or patience to address every reply individually but I'll summarize my thoughts as follows.

Useless? That's a stretch and more likely an argument of semantics than anything. You can make up all sorts of unrealistic situations where a hundred more horsepower would save your life or something silly like that so at best it's debatable, but I'll humor you. Let's look at the 370Z as an example as that has quite a bit of power. If you could survey the owner of every 370Z and see how often they used the entire potential of the engine the answer would be well below 1%. If we're actually talking peak horsepower the number would be astronomically low, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say simply "at full throttle" since the area under the power curves is what's important blah blah etc. Anyway, 1% is obvious as the vast majority of any driver's time is spent waiting at stop lights, in traffic, cruising on the highway, etc. This number is likely true even for the most spirited of drivers and weekend warriors, nevermind all the people who bought the car for other reasons. Even on the average track you'd be very surprised at how little time the engine is producing its maximum potential power.

Now let's take that 1% of the time the car is driven at full throttle and estimate how much of that occurs during street driving (since the argument you're making is that more power is not useless for daily driving) and how of that percentage, how much is necessary to achieve some goal that 200hp could not have.

The answer, quite simply, is zero.

I'm sure you're thinking I'm just pulling numbers out of thin air, and I absolutely am, but without advocating severely breaking the law there is simply no argument to be made that will justify having more power in a street going car. If you having 300 hp vs 200 hp is the difference in being able to pass someone then you're driving recklessly, potentially a felony offense. End of story, especially yours if you are caught doing it. Some simple physics calculations will show you that in any given situation in which an extra hundred horsepower would save you from a collision or some other outlandish situation, the amount of time to be "gained" from the added power is minute fractions of a second, far below what you'd have gained by simply paying more attention while driving. You don't use your full attention to drive, nor do I, nor does anyone else on the planet. I will assure you that improving how you drive is a much better use of your time, effort and money than any amount of added power. The only argument left is that of laziness: you don't want to downshift, you don't want to rev the engine up, etc. Guess what? This isn't the car for you.

Am I arguing that the car shouldn't have more power? No.

Some people will spend ungodly amounts of money and produce astronomical numbers with the car, and if that's their prerogative then more power to them.

What I am saying is that daily driving is NOT any sort of justification for it to have more power. There are a lot of factors that went into determing the performance of the car, perhaps chief among them being price. And this is the thing that many people seem to be missing. They understand that more power means more money, and maybe are even willing to pay more money for it. What they are missing is that Toyota/Subaru is not marketing this car to those people. There are already plenty of cars in that segment for you to choose from. Would you go on a Ferrari board and complain that they are too expensive? Would you go on a Honda Civic board and complain that you can't comfortably fit 8 people and your dog? Probably not. So why would you come here and complain that this car doesn't have enough power when there's plenty of alternatives in your price range that are better suited to your interests?

This car is not for people looking to spend 35k.
This car is not for people looking for 300 horsepower without extensive modifications.

It is what it is. Many, many people will buy this car and drive it for years to come without ever touching it beyond basic maintanence. Others will modify it to make gobs of power and do whatever else they want or need. But if this car is not what you want and doing extra work beyond initial purchase does not interest you then do not buy. Take it or leave it, we will not miss you.

And that's why you need a lot of power, so that you have more down low!

They could have tuned the car for torque down low at the cost of high end but considering horsepower is a function of torque and RPM it makes a lot more sense to tune for the high end from a performance point of view. On a track you can generally keep the engine in a somewhat ideal RPM band so it's irrelevant. On the street it means you probably have to downshift more often. Apparently that's too much to ask some people.

This is what I have been saying all along. In Georgia where I live it's like this too. If handling is the biggest thing going for this car then I would have to go to a track to enjoy it. I can easily see people easily getting bored of this car unless they live near some nice twisty back roads. My RSX is the same way until I see a nice curve here and there.

I can attest to this since I live in near Atlanta. As you would expect, here even the beltway only turns to the left and everybody thinks they are <fill in their favorite Nascar driver here>

Fortunately for me, I do live right on the edge of "civilization" so by going North or West of my house I'm in the back roads! I've been timing some of them on my 919 to see how close I can get to those times in the FRS.

1% of cars may hit the max hp during daily driving but since were making up percentages I'll say that 80% probably hit max torque at every stoplight save for an s2000 and this car where that figure occurs at 6000rpm.

The highest percentage of people live in urban areas than at any other time in history. Start andstop driving is a fact of life and that is only going to get worse. 1% of these cars will ever see a track so the idea of keeping the car in the prope rev range by shifting is a moot point. The simple fact is a better balance of low end torque and maximum hp would probably appeal to a wider range of people.

The last 2 sports cars released in this country with anemic torque figures have both failed. Where is my second gen rx-8? The 370z doesn't have this problem and is selling well enough to continue being produced. At least honda tried to address the problem in the s2k by adding displacement, but it wasn't enough to save the car. It doesn't matter what kindof roads they have in japan, the us market is the primary one for this car and the others mentioned. If it doesn't sell here it gets cancelled. I hope that isn't the case for this car, and I'm not too worried as I still think the fa-20dit motor will find its way under the hood.

Well, isn't that a backhanded slight on the entire community if I ever heard one.

Well said!

So how many of you stop on on-ramps?

You just happened to be the person I quoted, but the entire post wasn't necessarily aimed at you. A number of people have expressed opinions in this thread that the car needs more power and that is my reply to those people. The BRZ certainly isn't the be all end all of cars, it's simply a good fit for the market it's aimed at. More expensive, more powerful cars have their place as well but the BRZ isn't meant to be among them. It seems we agree on that.

If that's the case I feel very bad for the 80% of people that are spending way too much money on gas.

I don't know about you guys but both my 06 WRX (Heavily Modified) and my 09 STI (Stage 2) went wide open throttle nearly every time I got in the car. Whether that would be freeway on ramps, merging and needing to get in front of a truck, etc. I like having a little bit of power. For me 350 WHP, is a very usable amount on a car that weights 3300 lbs.

First of all, I don't know anyone whose worried about gas when buying a toy sports car as a 2nd or 3rd vehicle which is what this car is marketed as. As long as the car gets decent mpg who cares?

What makes you think people are wasting a lot of gas? For cars that make good power/torque, that max torque figure usually occurs between 3-4k. That is a pretty standard shift range for people who aren't driving a prius or trying to hypermile. Hell, my car idles at 1100 rpm so shifting at 3500 rpm really isn't using much of the rev range at all.

Whoever was talking about max torque meant full throttle, I think that was pretty clear.

Even then, I don't think 80% of people floor the gas on their cars. I don't know where you live, but where I live, just watching the cars on the road start and listening to the engines you can tell everyone is taking it easy. I've personally floored it 1 time when accelerating to highway speed from an emergency stop.

I have to here in the Bay Area when obligated to by Red/Green onramp traffic easing. There isn't a choice.

I have those on my commute here in Atlanta. This is where I combine your thought with the one above about "when do people floor the accelerator".

I treat this as a drag tree. I know it's a 3 count between the two lights (one for each lane) so my goal is to catch up to the car in front of me when they merge and put as much room as possible between me and the guy at the light behind me.

Its amusing in my current DD, but I'm sure it will be much more fun in the FR-S.

And you don't have a problem with these right? My mom's fat slow SUV accelerates on those fine without full throttle.

I think we can all agree, having a lot of power can be fun, but it is by no means necessary when the vast majority of cars on the street do fine with less power that they never end up using anyways.

Never, not with my current car and not with a host of middling sedan rentals I had when I first moved here: Altima, Cobalt, Civic, Cruze (was really good actually), Camry... maybe another one or two I have forgotten.

Bingo! We are likely splitting hairs in nomenclature - specifically around what need and want mean - but really anyone who 'needs' more power than that delivered by a base model new car, is not someone I really want to share the roads with.

No it's not, Toyota and Subaru have said it themselves. This is supposed to be a drivers car with a pure driving feel and it was designed to be a "great entry level sports car" AS WELL.

Not sure why People are crucifying LSx for what he's saying, I agree with him 100%. What I said earlier was in response to people saying that this car is "underpowered", or claims that there's a serious "NEED" for higher horsepower which I still feel is untrue. For it's weight I wouldn't call this car underpowered, I'd call this car sufficiently powered and even more so for what Toyota/Subaru envisioned for it. Hell I stripped the mods (everything except the tune) off my SVT and it's making about 183 at the crank, I still blow by most people on the freeway and have ZERO trouble overtaking somebody, but there are also times when I find myself saying "had I the power I used to have, I probably could have jumped in that opening before the gap closed" (which btw is a VERY asshole way to drive and I under no circumstance advocate it; that's why they're thoughts and not attempted actions).
Truthfully I think this car is a great "stepping stone" in stock form. It's a great starter sports car and telling from the reviews it's very forgiving which is what people that aren't used to racing RWD or driving RWD during inclement weather need. From there you can either modify it and make more power to achieve what you want out of it or simply move on to a better car. The damn thing is going to be mid 20's in price, what the hell do people expect from it? Stop referencing GTI's, speed3's and such a point of power comparison; they're FWD (which are cheaper to manufacture) that are based heavily off of pre-existing platforms.


Either way, it's not a backhanded insult. It's a fact. At 200bHP on prius tires, things happen slower and at a speed that won't necessarily be a death sentence. Couldn't say the same if this thing had a hundred more horse and was riding on sport cup's.

Not by choice but the on-ramp on my commutes are parking lots during rush hour. However, often times its also not flowing because someone got the jitters and decided not to accelerate to merge and instead decides to slow down and wait for a huge opening so they can cruise in at 20mph into 75mph traffic.

I think my preference for having more power is because I have a choice to go faster as desired when desired. You are not "limited" by the power output of the car as you know there are plenty on tap. Somedays I am not in the mood to floor my car and rev the snot of it just to get up to speed quickly. Driving a 12 second car as a 14 second car is much easier than trying to make a 15 second car do a 14 second run if you can follow my reasoning.

You keep talking about flooring the pedal and wasting gas. You do realize you don't need to have the pedal to the floor to develop maximim torque right? Unless you are driving a diesel your car should have a redline well above the 3-4k range where most cars develop their maximum torque.

RPM alone is meaningless. Unless you're at full throttle the engine is only producing a fraction of what you'd see on a dyno chart at any given rpm.

:word: That should be obvious - if it were otherwise you would have no way of controlling acceleration rates as the throttle would just be a binary on-off switch!

:word:

This is exactly how I feel about it. Just because there is more power doesn't mean I want to use all of it. It could also mean that the low-mid range is more richer in usable power rather than having to rev high all the time to go somewhere.

:thanks:

And that is totally fine, but for some people the fun is the challenge of driving the slower car fast. ;)

My only problem with driving a slower car fast is that it feels like you're stressing out the engine(N/A 4 cylinders suffer from this badly) and the NVH sounds and feels terrible in daily driving. I hope the boxer 4 is a smooth engine.

Which is perfectly fine. "Fun" is so subjective to each individual that we would never get an agreement on what constitutes it anyway. :happy0180:

Wow.....

After reading this thread, I have to admit I am a bit... well... lets just say taken back.

To each their own..

Personally.. I have had MANY sports cars, ranging from 200hp to 1200hp. Corvettes, 911's, GTR's, Supra's, GTO, several DSM's, Miata, Civic Si, even a Focus...

I have hundreds of track hours over the last 20 years, I have made hundreds of passes down the 1/4 mile, and yes, I have taken part in hundreds of highway pulls and other street races. Yet, your average large pickup (this is Texas), or kid in a 150hp civic drives much more like an ass than I ever have.

How you drive is not determined by what car you have, but what car you have does determine how you can drive.

As of yet... I have not found a point where a car had too much power for the street; Nor has a car ever accelerated too fast, broke too hard, had too much grip, or a high enough top speed... Anyone is free to disagree, but that does not make you right.

As for how much money I spend on gas? Well that is my business.. if you don't like it, you can suck on my high octane leaded exhaust gasses.

:thumbsup:

yeah but practically all the sports cars built today are about power. the miata and now the frs are the ONLY sports cars not about power. they were designed to be different from the start, to buck the trend, they were advertised as such, targeted towards people that want to buck the trend.

if you are into torque, plain and simple: more cylinders than 4 is ideal for you. 4 cylinder engines are just not built for low or midrange, if you build a 4 cylinder for torque you sacrifice top end horsepower like in the ka24. so what you want is something with more cylinders, but you can't stick an engine with more cylinders in a lightweight compact car like the miata or the frs without using expensive materials like the 6 cylinder exige or evora.

if this car was built for torque and horsepower, it would be just like all the other sports cars on the market today. if horsepower is what you want, why not just buy what's already on sale now? the new z's lighter and more compact than the old one. the domestic pony cars are heavy but a good value as far as horsepower per dollar.

this car was built for balance, something that a select few find even more important than power to weight. and it was built for that small minority of people who "get it." the reason why it wasn't built for people who prioritize torque, power to weight, and power to dollar is because there are plenty of options on the market for people like that already!

I too have owned many Bugatti Veyron's, lambos, and zonda's. I always drive at 2000mph and have years of non stop track experience. It's always the kid in the 90hp ricer civic who drives like an idiot. Also I spend millions of dollars on gas every year at my oil refinery in yellow stone park. =p