dammm...glad you're ok..sad to see another one like this

I foresee insurance rates on the BRZ going up soon...

:(

Not from just one other accident.

I'm on my phone so if I make mistakes, blame Sportsguy83

Insurance will total it due to airbags going off. To much risk to replace them and then have them fail in next accident!!!

Hahahaha, was just about to say, "Better purchase my new policy tomorrow before the rates go up again!" Lol.

In all seriousness though, glad you're alright and that it was a one-car incident. That really sucks-- there's something tragic about a torn up car still on dealer plates :(. Who knows if it will be totaled, but it doesn't look badly damaged to me. Either way, I hope your carrier gets you back in a BRZ soon.

Looks like the Primacies strike again? I had the same thing happen to me on a wet onramp (wasn't expecting it to be wet-- it wasn't a rainy day there was just something dumping water across the ramp at one particular point for some reason). I got quite sideways. The wet performance of those tyres is shit.

Questionable thing for me is the suspension, I think the unibody looks ok but it looks like the wheels both got dinged. If the diff and steering rack got smacked hard enough I'd call it a loss, if not I think they'll fix it.

First I'm glad you're ok. Second that fuckin sucks. Third depending on you're insurance might be totaled. The above comment I'm too lazy to quote about airbags I know is true for some companies.

OP, you mentioned that it had just rained. If there hasn't been any rain in your area for a while all the oil and other fluids that drip off cars build up over time. Rain hits and all that floats. Same goes for new pavement, it's slick when it gets wet. This can catch new drivers, and people new to a car.

To all that read this thread. While playing or driving hard on wet surfaces is fun, keep it to parking lots without anything around.

When driving a vehicle that is fairly new to you take it easy. Also remember that the single biggest limiting factor on 90% of newer cars designed as a sports car is the tires which are on it. I live in Maine so snow tires are required in order to get around unless you have 4WD(AWD doesn't count, most of my Subaru friends stress buying snows). I have to change driving styles depending on what I'm running, snows aren't good for more the 80 mph depending on width, skinny ones like my 185/65/14's on my impreza aren't good for more the 70.

Glad you are okay. We all make mistakes and sometimes it's pushing a car too hard for the conditions or equipment installed. I did it myself with the Jetta I had for my first car.

I bet that frame's bent... looks like a hard hit. Its all going to depend on the damage under the surface. I would say totaled from past experience.

I would like to point all the blame at the tires and road oils, but I also can't ignore the fact that it could have been so easily avoided if I straightened out before hitting the gas. I did spend a lot of time trying to break traction in a parking lot the last time it rained hard, and it was tough even in 2nd gear, so I had no idea I could pull this off in 3rd. Agreed, the recent dryness definitely played a factor, though. Tough lesson learned :suicide:

Two major differences between a parking lot and the road.

1) 2nd vs 3rd (most likely going a decent amount faster)
2) amount of water under tires, slower speeds allow tires to make full contact

Although I mentioned a parking lot, rethinking things, that really only works if it's covered in snow/ice. That let's you know the extreme limits of a car/tire for acceleration performance.

Accident before your license plate even came :sigh:

Yeah, surfaces make a huge difference. When it rained down here in Santa Barbara a month or two ago (back when I was still on the Primacies) I took the car across town to an empty parking lot to get some oppo practice in. On the way out and back I took a nice windy back road. On the way out I drove pretty conservatively and was still getting a little bit of slip here and there. When I got to the lot, the asphalt was chunkier than most road surfaces and I had more grip-- you could certainly get big slides going but you had to work at it even in second as you described. When I was done I hopped back on the same road and ramped the speeds / throttle inputs up a bit and was very quickly sliding all over the place. They were smallish slides, but the car was much, much easier to provoke on the smoother, newer surface of the road than it was on the rougher parking lot surface.

It really was quite an unnerving drive home. It was fine because the roads were totally deserted, very familiar to me, and it was a good time to play around with the car. I felt perfectly in control of the car, but it felt controllable in the same sense that you feel in control when sliding around an autox course: it's fine when its an empty road, you're in the mood, and you're on top of the car and doing things intentionally. The level of grip was frighteningly low, however-- the whole time I was thinking, "Holy shit, what if the car was driving like this while I was cruising down a busy street and I had to make an emergency maneuver?" It was literally like driving on snow-- I was sort of doing 20-25mph through corners and any time I used more than ~25% throttle the car would get decidedly sideways in a very un-progressive manner. To keep the tail end in line you had to be very smooth with all your inputs and only use a tiny bit of throttle-- anything jerky would immediately kick the back end out. Pretty fun stuff when you're up for it, not so good when you're trying to get somewhere safely on trafficked roads.

Anyway, don't get too down on yourself. Just think of it as a good excuse to order up some skid pad time in the future! :burnrubber:

I've had my plates for a over a month, just didn't put em on yet heh heh

Car was born (to me, anyway) on New Year's day, and I've put ~4500 miles on it so far, thanks to my 40-mile commute. Feels like I've been driving it for so much longer, though :/

But thanks for the kind words, all :cheers: I haven't had a chance to properly grieve yet, had to rush to work to pacify whiny customers for the rest of the day after the incident. I will proceed to shed a single tear once I crawl into bed in a bit ;_: