Is the BRZ/86 a front mid engine car?
 

Sorry if this has been spoken about before but I couldn't find a thread that answers this question and nothing official online. Is the BRZ/86 a "front mid" like the S2000? I think the FD RX-7 is in this category too, thoughts?

It is not.

the entire engine assembly would have to be behind the front struts. to be "mid"

Cheers, I'm guessing they did their best but not quite hey. It still looks pretty far back when I pop the bonnet.

How high are you?
And more important, dude puff, puff, pass.
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:popcorn:

As a huge fan of 2-seat FR sports cars with engines set WAAAY back, I'm still gonna say that "front/mid" is a bullsh*t designation. My 50/50 240Z was not a fundamentally different vehicle architecture than my 50/50 S2000 was, despite about a cylinder and a a half of its long L6 engine residing in front of front wheel centerline.

The 55/45 FT86 is in a different category from those cars, but IMO it is 100% more to do with its way aft rear wheel/axle location due to 2+2 seating, NOT that its engine is situated kinda forward.

My 0.02 on what is IMO a stupid subject, "FMR" is marketing to make standard FR cars seem more "exotic". We all knew a rearset engine was important for an FR sports car way before Nissan marketed the not-even-50/50 350Z as "front/mid-engine". B.s...

Why not a rear engine/front drive?

Wrong thread. :thumbsup:

If they'd not gone cheap parts bin it could have been quite a bit further back. They didn't try at all.

:slap: get back in the box.

:D


humfrz

It is front mid-engine enough to call it front mid-engine and to not sound crazy. There is probably more benefit to having weight over the drive wheels like it is for rear mid-engine cars, so arguing whether the engine in the 86 is short a few inches of being front mid-engine is kinda silly. Could it benefit from a few less pounds in the front that could be in the middle? Yes, but it really doesn’t change much.

uncontrollable oversteer, never mind snap oversteer hell.

I'm sure rear engine / front drive can be made to work with some suspension redesign, but it makes no business sense to make such, as it won't have FR pros but will have FR cons.
It won't handle better by each axle wheels doing just one job, but it will be costlier to make, it will weight more and there will be less internal cabin volume due need of routing axle / middle column.

I'll just leave this failure here.

Not quite rear engined/FWD, but Mid engined/FWD...
https://hips.hearstapps.com/roa.h-cd...0xh;center,tophttps://i.pinimg.com/originals/ed/53...b6d15243e6.jpg



It really was a bold design, and if they had more money/time I'm sure it would have been a formidable opponent to most of the LMP1's at the time.