I don't know what planet you're on but these cars do have significant mechanical issues. It's not all taillight condensation. When I have to have a tranny replaced at 5800 miles, that's serious. When I find out tons of people on the same forum have the same problem, that's an issue.

It's a first year car, I fully expect the quality to go up. But for this year, it's not a mechanically reliable car for a lot of us, especially if you drive it as advertised.

As for CR, they actually do an awful lot of field testing on cars, it's not all user input. Which makes me think a ton of people on here don't know how consumer reports works and should probably stop sounding off on them.

Sure, they dumb down the adjectives for a 6th grade reading level because almost all publications do that, and they have to sell subscriptions. But they're one of the single most comprehensive databases of end product reliability, they do do their homework and verification to a decent standard, and they pour through a lot more data than anyone here has when researching cars and products.

The best part about that is they KEEP MANUFACTURERS HONEST. They hold them accountable. Honestly, you should be grateful that they took a blowdryer to our beautiful, unique snowflake because it gets Subaru/Toyota's attention, and forces them to increase QA/QC and improve products year to year. Manufacturers pay serious attention to Consumer Reports and many other publications. When they don't, you get things like the Pontiac Aztek and company failure.

Again, for anyone saying CR is old farts filling out surveys, you simply chose to type before knowing what you're talking about. Page 3.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/a...ting/index.htm

Edit: Yeah this looks like geriatrics breaking pencil leads as they angrily fill in bubbles, and not a professional organization buying two cars for testing at their privately owned track:
http://video.consumerreports.org/ser...=1779346044001

Those two are mutually exclusive. More torque = shorter gear. Less torque = taller gear. If you feel 1st is too short, you can always start in 2nd at a light. Our 2nd is about the same as 1st in a Z06, in terms of relative gearing.

You'd probably walk away just as fine if you crashed a <insert brand/current model here> at 70 mph too.

Precisely.

Everyone is forgetting that "fun factor" is not a consideration for CR's rating of a given product, or in this case, a car. They consider the car itself, it's value, and it's reliability.

Quite frankly, we ALL purchased the car for the fun factor or uniqueness. 25-27k can get a a SUBSTANTIALLY faster or bigger or practical or more reliable car. We didn't buy to get a good value. We bought fun.

Every car has the same opportunity to get the same checkboxes marked on their surveys.

If the BRZ owners are being more vocal...

That's in direct contradiction with the review they gave that I just posted.

http://video.consumerreports.org/ser...=1779346044001

Their review has no correlation with their willing to give the car a "recommended" or "not recommended" rating in their charts. A review is simply a review.

I was saying they clearly knew what people were buying these cars for. They weren't ignoring the "fun factor," and had a lot of nice things to say about it. I know video reviews are never the full story, but it does let you know they aren't just driving them around a parking lot and figuring out how it compares with accords and camrys. Consumer reports does this all the time though, and when issues are resolved they put the rating right where it should be.

I know you of all people would agree that the first year model of this car has more than it's share of problems, and the "not recommended" is probably warranted considering they're simply informing people that they can expect to have their new car spending some time in the shop in the first couple years.

Yeah.... no it's not. Not at all. Not with that disparity between two identical cars who had the same issues.

All major issues have been resolved and warrantied, except the crickets which is hardly a reliability issue, just an annoyance issue for some.

I don't believe it their ratings look at whether it was fixed under warranty or not. And honestly, they shouldn't. If a car has problems and they get fixed under warranty, that doesn't make the car reliable. The car is still unreliable.

You can say things like crickets shouldn't matter but they do. The reliability number is reflected by how many times the car gets taken in for work. So those people that have gone in and had their pumps replaced 4 times already, how do you think that reflects the reliability of the car?

Personally, I purchased the BRZ Limited because I expected the top of the line car from Subaru would have the best interior I could get in this car. The truth is, I have so many freaking rattles in the car, I've been seriously considering selling it. It drives me nuts.

If it was b/c the car was genuinely not reliable to drive, that's one thing. But the crickets were not a reliability issue, just an annoyance factor.

WHY a car goes into the shop matters just as much that it did.

And as the car has its little issues worked out and warrantied, it goes from "reliable but pay attention to TSBs" to "reliable enough for most idiots that drive to think it's reliable."