Does the BRZ Premium exist?
 

TL;DR version: I'm looking on Autotrader and there are a bunch of Limiteds being sold near me but zero Premiums. The closest Premium is 700 miles away. What gives?

Are people buying Premiums as soon as they come on the market, or is Subaru just not making that many Premiums?

There are plenty of base-trim GR86s that I can buy in my area, but I'd rather have a BRZ. Less jittery ride quality when daily driving apparently. Also the car is made by Subaru so there might as well be a Subaru badge on it.

Longer:

I guess $2500 isn't that much more money to spend to go up a car trim level but I'd actually prefer the cheaper model even if the price was the same...

Bigger wheels: I guess they're supposed to look better? Worse for ride quality, weight, unsprung mass. No thanks.

Leather seats: Looks like just a few of the side bits are leather. Not sure what the point is.

Heated seats: It gets kinda cold where I live but never cold enough that I thought heated seats made much of a difference. Plus they broke in my old BMW and I'd like to minimize the number of things that can break in my cars.

Headlights that rotate in the direction you're turning: My old BMW had these. One broke and it cost $1800 to replace, because the electronics module fried itself and the motor. No thanks. Besides, my 2018 BRZ's LED headlights have really wide beam dispersion and it gives me better illumination than the BMW's rotating halogen headlights despite not rotating.

Blind spot monitoring: If you simply adjust your mirrors according to how the Society of Automotive Engineers says you should, then you don't have blind spots that need to be electronically monitored. So it's a feature that's literally useless and I'm sure it can break too.

they have quite a few premiums down in the south. although a couple dealers are advertising the limiteds below msrp.

Just to throw in speculation, the last model year of the 1st gen only offered Limited trim (AFAIK when I was looking to buy mine back in 2020, and ended up getting a used Premium because of that). Perhaps Subaru Japan, Subaru of America or the dealers (or any combination of those) learned that people will happily buy the more expensive trim if the base trim is not available.

Wheels: If you didn't know, you couldn't tell the difference. My 18x9.5s are actually lighter than the stock 18x7.5.

Seats: They look good, but whatevs.

Heated seats: Are a must and I live in OK. I sometimes like to drive with the windows down when it's cooler with the seat heater on.

SRH: You can turn that feature off in the headunit.

Blind Spot: Before the Mazda 3 became my fiance's car, driving to work early morning in the rain, person didn't have their lights on. I went to change lanes and almost got in a wreck because they were driving at least 20 over the speed limit.


But for me, stuff like wheels/suspension doesn't matter because I knew I would be changing them anyway. Life is too short to drive a stock car.

Veering off topic, I'd be interested if you expanded on this.

To me, "heated seats" seem like a feature that sounds great but in practice offers little/no value.

Because a person's body is pressed against a seat, and car seats are made of materials that insulate pretty well (well, cloth more than leather), car seats seem to quickly reach a temperature that's pretty ideal just by way of being sat on.

So it's not like the seats are cold (after a minute or two), and it's not like you're really losing a lot of heat out your back or butt when you're sitting in a car seat, so what's the value of adding extra heat at that point?

Seems like it would really just make you feel hot and sweaty, which is the effect that heated seats have on me.

The simple fact is that Toyota is allocated more of the 86/BRZ production capacity than Subaru. So the inventory of BRZ's is much lower than the inventory of GR86's, and like mentioned, the Limited's sell just fine, so why build a bunch of Premium's?

Because I like them.

If you don't, then don't worry about it.

Never had a need for heated seats when I lived in California. Now that I live in Idaho, heated seats in the winter are AWESOME.

My next all season vehicle will have them.

Ditto where I live. In the depths of winter they are really nice since they heat up pretty quickly compared to the rest of the car.

When I'm just driving on shorter trips and the car never gets totally warmed up, they stay on all the time. If I'm in the car for a while, say 30+ minutes, I'll eventually turn them off when the car interior gets fully warm.

I bought a premium. I find the car more appealing in base trim though I get why more people spring for the limited.

Good thing with Subaru is that you can just order exactly what you want. Go for it.

Order a BRZ Premium yourself, they'll build whatever color/spec you tell them.

Yep. Don't understand why Toyota won't do that.

it seems like there may be less wiggle room on the price though. but i haven't started kicking tires & asking the tough question.

Bigger wheels: Most base model owners would happily swap wheels with you if you want to go down in the size.

Leather seats: Not really leather seats but definitely look and feel better.

Heated seats: Plus point till they work, no loss if they stopped working, just don't fix it. I do prefer just using seats than forced hot air, but that's anacdotal.

Headlights that rotate in the direction you're turning: If they brake, you can find junkyard replacement given how many get total, or you can put base headlight on there.

Blind spot monitoring: Not really as human error is still a possibility then BSM steps in. And if it's useless and it breaks you don't have it, so not an issue either.

I don't see any downside given you don't mind paying difference.