My theory on why people think the GT86 is slow
 

Hi all,

I bought a 2017 GT86 in 2018 and have been driving the heck out of it ever since. I consider it to be the perfect car in every respect, including speed.

Many people complain about the FRS/BRZ/GT86 as being slow and use strap on snails and screaming toaster ovens trying to make them faster. To me, they have missed a crucial day of drivers ed; the the day when they teach you how to downshift.

OR maybe they just don't teach people how to drive stick at all anymore in drivers ed and for most people, the ft86 is their first manual transmission car because there really aren't that many available any more.

So my theory is this: most buy an ft86 and think, I'm gonna learn how to drive stick shift in this thing, are cruising on the highway in 6th gear and are like "lets see how fast thing is" so they floor it and don't realize they should be downshifting into third then flooring it from there. Hence the "ft86's are too slow" reputation these cars have.

Ive had my GT86 for 4 years now and the only modification I am thinking of getting is wider wheels with grippier tires. Because I lose traction consistently with this bad bitch. My advice for anyone who thinks this car is slow is to get behind the wheel of one with an automatic transmission and floor it, the car can downshift better than you probably can and it is not slow, trust me, I have gotten numerous speeding tickets in this car and if I get one more I will have my license suspended.

Hope this thread makes you more grateful for your NA ft86, its a mean whip. Don't let consumer reviews dictate your driving experience.

Agree [emoji817]


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Do YoU eVeN ToRqUe DiP, bRo?

Slow is relative. If someone wants a stoplight racer they should just get a Mustang.

The FA20's power band doesn't lend itself to people used to large displacement or turbocharged engines and/or automatic transmissions (that downshift on throttle application). If you're willing to downshift a gear or two and keep revs up you shouldn't lack for power.

Agreed. I grew up with high revving NA cars, so being in the right gear has always been the key. My wife (who drives a ridiculously fast turbo hot hatch) is used to the car just launching when she plants her foot in any gear at any RPM range - it’s quite an adjustment for her to jump into the 86.

Hi welcome to FT86.

You joined back in 2019 and now decided it was time for an intro, what took you so long? :D

Been driving ONLY stick since 45 yrs no secret there; keep the revs up when you want to get serious.
The twins are not the fastest on the road as I am reminded everyday, but the balance between the power
available & nimble handling is what shines in these cars.

I have yet to get any ticket with my BRZ, but got many in my other city car which is really slow!
I just depends how responsible you want to be. :bellyroll:

I agree, the twins have enough power but for many americans they've been spoiled by displacement and torque. if you notice most of the complaints have come from NA versus asia or EU.. there's no amount of power they could've given the twins and still keep the low price and it would still be slower & more expensive per hp versus a mustang..

i got pulled over a few times in the twins, nearly all were warnings, one resulted in a ticket :(

This is thread 4,896.2 on this topic and not really a startling revelation to those that understand.
Those that don't agree will still say it should do all that and BE fast!
It took me 45 minutes to merge on the way home since there just wasn't enough power to get up to speed on the on ramp. All the old Cavaliers and Sunfires had to go around me while I waited for a big enough opening.

Nope the Tesla owns that group now.

And for IC the current power per dollar champ is Camaros of various performance heavy but feature light trims.

LOL. I came from a Nissan Frontier with the 2.4L 4 cylinder.

Not counting my Ducati Hypermotard 1100 and 821.

Never felt the power lacking in the 2020 or the 2022 now.

It also comes to mind another reason that adds to this phenomena: the car doesn't sound smooth when it is in high rpm's. The higher rpm range is where this car really shines and whenever you drive it in the higher rpm's (at least with stock exhaust) the boxer sounds angry, like you are hurting it or something... it sounds smooth and growly in the lower to mid range rpm's and then once you get into its happy place, the engine pretends like its unhappy, which probably tricks a lot of people into driving it at low rpm's only. If it sounded as smooth in the high rpm range people might drive it more like its meant to be driven.

The car is actually slow tho. Camrys and Accords are faster. Stock powerband and torque dip make it feel even slower. I love my brz but let's not pretend in stock form it's not slow or that people don't know how to downshift.

Nah it's slow. Even if you downshift into third, you just look funny making a lot of noise and slowly crawling past normal traffic on the highway doing 120 km/h. If Toyota didn't agree, they wouldn't have increased torque and made it come on sooner in the rpm range in the '22 cars.

It can be a phenomenal drivers car, serve a purpose, be enjoyable to drive, be a great track car etc... and still simultaneously be slow. Regardless of down shifting to any gear, the car is slow.

Slow isn't necessarily an insult, its just a factual statement. Can It get you to a speed you can get in some serious trouble sure, given enough time to get up to that speed. However most cars on the road can too, only those cars will do it just as fast if not faster. When you have a ton of minivans and Eco boxes on the road that are just as fast if not faster, its slow.

Or "normal" cars have just gotten fast...

Both the standard Camry and Accord (of the same age range as the first gen Twins) have a 0 to 60 of 8.5 seconds so well above the Twins. Yes, both have very limited numbers of higher performing cars that do it in about 6.5 which is pretty much Twin rate but they are about 5% of the production numbers so really don't count.

The definition of "slow" that get's thrown around astounds me sometimes. The bulk of the vehicles on the road have a 0 to 60 range of between 8 and 11 seconds but since the Twins don't have a 4 second time they are "slow". Yes there are much faster cars but the reality is that looking at averages the Twins fall firmly in the lower end of the fast cars not the slow category.

Of course they upgraded the power. The first gen design is about 15 years old by now. In 15 years from now (if there are still ICE cars) then people will be saying the same thing about the second gen. Still doesn't make it "slow".

The bulk haven't. It is just that car guys tend to take the highest spec cars and use them as the examples.
If you listen to most the Mustang Shelby GT500 is the common production model instead of about 1% of the ones on the road.

That standard of fast has slowly increased as the average normal car manufactured gets faster and faster, and the average sports car is faster and faster.

But instead of looking at the average speed of any vehicle on the road today.

Look at the average speed of an enthusiasts vehicle today.
Its got the same acceleration rate of the average entry level sports car from 15-20years ago. 2002 Mustang, RX-8, S2000, 2002 Miata etc…

0-60 in 6.5 And 1/4 in 14.5… that’s slow by any standard. People shouldn’t buy this platform because they want a fast rate of acceleration.
That isn’t the purpose for this platform. It has a lot of areas it excels in acceleration isn’t one though.

The twins are faster 0-60 than a Ferrari 308 was back when I was in high school, which was one of the most coveted cars around.

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Yesterday I revved to 6k rpm for the first time and it sounded like my engine was dying. I'll never do it again, I don't want to wreck the engine on this BRZ since my mom and dad paid for it for me. It's so slow though, I'll probably trade it in for a Honda Civic soon. I hear the SI turbo is fast!! \s

I have never looked funny/made a lot of noise/slowly crawled when downshifting to 5th/4th/3rd/whatever as needed to pass people. Especially slow-ass minivans and all of the SUV's or camry's people insist on buying these days. In fact it's almost too easy.

People think it is slow because it is. And it doesn't matter how good you are at keeping the revs high and downshifting to exactly the right gear, you still have to get above 4.5k every time you come to a stop. And if you are in stock form, that means you have to get through the torque dip again - which, to me, felt like hitting a wall.

I did think it was reasonably quick and more than livable with catless headers and an OFT e85 tune. But if I hadn't known I was going to do that, not sure I would have bought my Gen 1 - I really thought the torque dip was that bad.

a 1983 308 gts is basically exactly as fast as a 2013 brz.

but by that standard

A nice big screen TV in 1983 was about 25" and only like 240p.
by comparison do you think a 30" 480p TV is nice/big today because its better than a 30+ year old tv?
Probably not, when basically everyone has at least a 50" 4k TV now days.

As technologies advances so does the standards in which we measure them.

It's fast in the corners and that's all I care about. I wouldn't say no to a power bump though.

I usually shift between 3-4k....

Thinking back...i guess i actually piss off every driver around me for how slow i drive...Maybe i should drive faster to surpass the traffic instead of keeping up with them.

When I look at 0 to 60 times from Car and Driver for a 2016 accord it's 5.6 sec for the V6 and 7.0 sec for the 4 cylinder. Base Camry's are a bit slower at around 8 seconds with the V6 at 5.8 sec. Our cars have a 0 to 60 of 7.1 seconds with a stick if you dump the clutch you can get 6.3 seconds and around 8 sec with an auto. In real world testing an accord is probably beating us most of the time. If you have an auto you will match a base Camry.



And sure everyone will define fast and slow differently but when comparing the twins to other sports cars that people cross shop with the twins are slower than most.



Ecoboost Mustang - 5 seconds
V6 Camaro - 5.3 seconds
WRX - 5.3 seconds
Civic Type R - 5.4 seconds
Golf GTI - 5.9 seconds
Miata - 5.8 seconds
Ford Focus RS - 4 seconds
Honda Civic Si - 6.8 seconds


Using the best case 0 to 60 time the twins only beat the Honda Si. It's at the bottom of the list so it's slower than most sports cars that it is cross shopped with which is ok since that is not what the car was meant for. What it lacks in acceleration it makes up for in handling.

I'm actually using my wife's Mini Cooper 3 cylinder base model lol. It's got more torque and lower in the rpm range so I can just squirt past people almost instantly. Doing that in my car is so slow in comparison, yet it has 70 more hp. The 86 makes a lot of noise and it's exciting, but it's painfully slow. In fact when I moved from my 2007 Cooper S with 2 busted cylinders and 132K to the 86, I couldn't tell the difference in speed. Maybe in 2nd gear from 5000-7400 rpm. But that's it. I absolutely can't wait to turbo/supercharge it

Before buying any car considere this before. Hint: Pick only TWO

Fast
Cheap Reliable

And that list makes up a teenny tiny segment of the cars on the road and really a totally different class. The list of "slower" cars than the Twins will have several hundred entries. The AVERAGE time for cars is around 8 seconds so the twins are above average no matter how you look at it.

And I will point out that all those times are the best squeezed out of them as well.
This argument that the times for the twins have to be forced but every other single listed time is a just a leisurely press of the pedal and off you go is a farce.

YA sure thing.

Think a few more criteria should be added, like handling, aesthetics, technology possibly.

Because a 370z is only about $1k more, and way faster. And scored way higher in reliability.

Gas mileage, insurance, maintenance in general is higher than GT86. The only 370z i could buy is in midnight blue, touring trim, MT so I can "replicate" the devil z.

Yeah so more than 3 categories to consider for the choose 2 scenario.

20mpg combined vs 24mpg combined for manuals, 22 vs 26 autos.
Insurance was basically the same for 2020 370z base vs 2020 brz base.
Maintenance is basically the same as well, especially since I diy everything.

Twins can accelerate it's just easier to get caught with your pants down unless you are in the right gear.
It's the complete opposite of how most modern tiny turbo engines are tuned.

Correct, just not quickly or “fastly”

I guess it also depends on where you are and how fast normal traffic accelerates. In my area in Ohio I can keep up with traffic while shifting at 3000 RPM and the throttle only partially depressed. If I'm first at a stoplight and accelerate briskly to 40 MPH shifting at 5000 RPM I leave traffic far behind.

I think you're missing my point. Sports car enthusiast are comparing the twins to other sports cars or somewhat sporty cars. When you compare the twins to other sports cars in a similar price bracket it's at the bottom of the list well below average.



Also, the reason I pointed out the twins really had to push for a 6.3 sec 0 to 60 is because that's what I remember the guy who got the time said he had to do. Even so it's a moot point because it was still the second slowest with its best time.



So if you have a manual you will be slightly faster than base model volume seller cars e.g. Accords and Camrys. If you have an auto I'll be just as slow as them or slower. The twins in stock form are not fast when compared to any modern sports car or even slightly sporty car.

Don't forget tyres