What's wrong with this car?
 

I was driving mine today during a mild chinook after 1 cm of snow, dirty roads but not slippery.

I had the usual smile on my face this car delivers just about every time I drive it.

I was thinking about all the criticisms levelled at this car, including my own.

One by one I was knocking them of my imaginary list of: "What's wrong with this car?"

As I returned home I found I had knocked every single objection or criticism off the list.

Are there any left on yours?

Shitty door speakers and the fact that it's sold as a scion, other then that it's perfect.

Needs 50 more horse powers!!1!

It should have come stock with a throaty exhaust that spits fire and burbles like a hooka.

The boomerang on the headlights should always be on, always.... even when the car is off. hahaha.

Whats wrong with this car? It's just too sexy, 5 month ownership and 3 numbers on my windshield wipers later, god damn ladies, i just want to drive.

that i can't fit it into my living room, and stare at it

the longer i have my car the more i'm in love with it

annoying rattles/buzzes from the panels, i'll be inspecting/adjust the car thouroughly in the summer.

that's the only thing that bugs me, i mean, i understand it's a budget car, but you know, after 50 or whatever years of building cars you'd figure that they would have figured how to put panels on a car without them rattling off in less than 2 years.

I think the rattling comes down to a cost thing, a Lexus LS is as silent as a monastery.

thicknes of a panel is a cost thing

having them snap in properly and hold is an engineering thing

plus, as i've mentioned many times, the FRS is 70% Impreza designed in 1993, they could have figured out a few things by now.

You know there is a 92-page thread already on this, right?

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8629

Cheap and easy to fix.

You could even have the only BRZ in town with an upside down grille, just fit BRZ badging.

Not in Canada eh?

Supercharger kit....

One source of rattling has a factory fix, spot welds under the parcel shelf.

The rest come with the car apparently. Some owners have added sound deadening material to address this characteristic.

Deleting the intake sound generator quietness the car considerably as dies fitting more expensive tires.

That cheap tinny rattle from gravel thrown up into the wheel arches is part of the charm....reminds me of my 1972 Datsun.

70% eh! Gotta source for that?

Hmmm, let's see: Impreza awd, BRZ rwd. Impreza 4 door hatch, BRZ two door coupe, best looking Impreza still ugly, BRZ pretty...

Nope, I don't think you have that right:

BRZ has a new engine, an Aisin transmission (not a Subaru transmission), a different rear suspension, different brakes, different body shell, heck they even reversed the front suspension and changed the strut angle.

I mean if you mean they still just spot weld a unibody as they did in 1993 and consider that to be the same engineering I guess you might have a point...

This thread was intended to be about unforgivable flaws in this car that are unreasonably expensive to fix.

Are there any such flaws or would you buy a new one tomorrow if it came with an attractive new feature?

To produce a flawless new car is pretty impressive, if indeed that's what Subaru has done.

Decreasing tolerances increases cost. Plus I think every car forum for every car has people complaining of X Y Z rattle

poke in and underneath a first gen impreza and you will see

hell the door-card is 90% identical in it's execution. Overall the car is different, sure, but the lego blocks on which it was built are over a decade old.

Agree.

Agree.

Just because it's different on the surface doesn't mean the platform isn't common.

Remember that the Porsche Cayenne and VW Touareg share a platform (so does the Audi Q7), doesn't mean they're the same car in the end.

My biggest gripe is the road noise/lack of sound insulation. Couple that with the relatively terrible stereo and I really struggle on longer trips in this thing.

The speakers I've already dealt with, but you have to crank them so loud to down out the road noise that it gets a bit grating after a while.

Secondly I'd say the "sport" mode on the VSC, does it even do anything differently than full-on? As far as i can tell it doesn't allow for any more sideways angle and the traction control steps in just as abruptly. Yes, i want it to let me hang the tail out for more than 0.5 seconds and i don't think that's too much to ask.

^^ Sport mode definitely lets you get the tail out a tiny bit further, but I'd agree that it steps in way too soon.

OH! I also find the fact that the trunk doesn't have an open button on the outside of it to be ridiculously annoying. It seems minor but my old car had one so I guess I'm used to it?

By the time I've forgotten to hit the button inside the car and get around to the trunk my key is usually in my pocket already. Then I have to find the key and hold the stupid button for 3 seconds. SO ANNOYING!

It does. At least the BRZ does. Under the centre of the lift area of the trunk lid there's a rectangular push button.

It's designed to keep you fast. Tail out is slow. VSC is designed to catch your slide after you've already gone a bit too far.

Unless you're trying to go slow for show. Then you need to switch if off completely.

The FRS just has a blank where the BRZ's rear trunk release is.

Well, sure, and all cars today are built on the original platform: four wheels and seats....

This claim that such and such a platform so old it should have the defects worked out is a tired old argument. As if engineers in the '70's didn't know how to design a chassis. DB7? Same car as the original Jaguar XJ-S. Jaguar XK? Based on the Aston Martin DB9. Callum had a hand in both.

How similar are these cars? Depends.

The BRZ is not an Impreza. It certainly isn't a 1993 Impreza. What's your source?

There's a big difference between something having the same number of wheels and seats and sharing a physical platform.

A shared platform means shared parts, including parts (or all) of the unibody. If you look at how many parts on these cars are directly taken from an Impreza (WRX, but still an Impreza) you'll see a lot more in common than you first think.

It's not designed to keep you fast, it's designed to keep you out of trouble. If it was designed to make you fast it would intervene in different ways.

Tail in is definitely faster, but the VSC intervening slows you down more than just a little bit of tail out.

Damn crickets...

one thing i do wish this car had is a hatch

would make transporting my dog so much easier....i don't like his muddy paw prints on the seats

Alright, some honest gripes.

1. Even on the lowest setting, the interior climate fan has a ridiculous loud buzz and high pitch whine that causes me physical discomfort in my ears.

2. The rake of the rear windscreen means that even if you stop for a few seconds in bad weather, it become impossible to see out the rear windscreen. It really should have a wiper. When it warms up, I'll definitely be applying Aquapel as I find it works better than RainX.

3. There is no possible way to go from On w/ engine running, to On w/ engine off if you have the keyless w/ pushbutton start and a manual transmission. Many many times I get home from work and I want to catch the end of a song, or maybe there is an interesting story on the radio to which I want to finish listening. Even if it's just 30 seconds to shut off and then wait for the radio to start up again.... I find it so goddam annoying.

4. I think 5x114 is a more popular bolt pattern and the WRX range uses it. So many people on my local subaru forum are selling their STI Enkei or BBS wheels for dirt cheap, and I can't buy them :(

What? The crazy, jumpy, rear end behavior won you over???

I hate that I have to turn the car to ON to operate the windows instead of acc like every other vehicle.

Yet another reason that I'm glad I chose BRZ.

My only complaints so far,

5x100 is garbage
I wish the headlights and tail lights were black housing
I'm already dreading doing sparkplugs!!!
Crickets... Mine come and go. It's liveable.

Don't worry about changing the spark plugs the change interval is something like 160,000 km, they're iridium.

Iridium yes I believe so, but Subaru (USA) says 60k miles. There probably isn't a good engineering reason for this.

But in any case, there are DIY threads on this board that deal with plugs. It isn't so bad. Best way is to jack the engine, one side at a time which may sound silly, but is probably less than half the time / effort of doing plugs in (say) a V6 Toyota (highlander, camry, etc.).

mine does this too, but only on the '1' setting, on 2 it goes away.


for 5X100 go to VW forums, a whole decade worth of wheel styles with offsets in the 25 ~ 38 range for a nice flush stance on the FRS without going wide on the width.

Yes, but they're still going to be a pain either way. What should be a 5 minute job on most cars is like a 5 hour job on ours. One of the things I hate most about boxers.

If you plan on forced induction, you're going to want to check them more often than not.