...part 2 continued from above...
Interior... wow, they really did this right. Best looking interior for a 25 grand car I've ever seen. The plastics have nice tactile feel (more rubber like than plastic), and the Alcantara/leather seats in this "Limited" model were very nice. Shifter is in the right spot, the steering wheel can adjust for tilt and telescope, plenty of head room, plenty of interior width (not knocking shoulders with your passenger, like in an NA/NB Miata or Elise), and the materials are great.
The stock seats are awesome, and
almost as good as the ones in the EVO X MR. Like the EVO seats, they won't work at all for fat guys (hey, calling it like it is - sorry) but you won't be tempted to swap them out for race seats unless it becomes a full-on caged race car. The height adjustment of the all-manual (thank you!) seats has a large range, and both Matt (vertically challenged) and I could each fit in the car with a race helmet on. The
center stack on this Limited model had automatic climate control, and if it works like on other Subarus (as in: not well), I'd skip the Limited package and get the "base" model for $2K or so less. The auto climate control, heated seats, rear wing, and leather inserts on the seat edges are all that goes into this pricier Limited model... I'd pass, but its not a big deal either way (supposedly only a 16 pound difference between the US packages).
The total height of the roof was super short (comes up to the bottom of my rib cage), and shorter than any Subaru I've ever seen by a foot or more. The rear wing from the Limited package does sort of make the rear lines look "right", so it might be worth the extra bucks of this Limited package just to get that. Or add your own later.
The rear seat is... very limited. Small children or child seats, maybe. With me sitting fairly upright in my normal driving position, at 6'3" tall, the front seat back was 2-3" from touching the rear seat bottom (almost zero rear seat leg room). The front seat could slide back that extra few inches, to where the seats touch (zero rear leg room), and I had to really reach for the controls... so I suspect up to a 6'7" driver would fit - there is a lot of head room. With a slimmer seat bottom (custom floor bracket) even these tall folks could race the car with a helmet on. Surprisingly roomy up front... but not so much in the back seat. The rear seats fold flat and you can fit a set of wheels and tires there, though.
Not to mention, there's a full sized spare wheel and tire, and a scissor jack and tire iron back there. So figure on losing another 45 lbs when the "trunk junk" is removed. Whatever the actual weights end up being (if you take the middle of the range of weights I've seen published that might be ~2700 lbs?), figure you could take out another 100-175 pounds from exhaust, battery and trunk junk in STX autocross trim. And that's the only logical ST class it should go into - its close to the RX8's 2800 lb weight and 200 horsepower (and low torque), but has less tire room (245/40/17 should fit but 255/40/17 might be a tick too tall to clear up front and full lock).
This blue exterior color looked HAWT in the sunlight as it rolled in, super quietly
Should be fun tinkering with this thing, regardless. Matt has a deposit on one already, but not at Subaru of Plano - those jokers were taking $1000
non-nonrefundable deposits on a car
they didn't know the prices of. And marking them up $900 over MSRP for "paint protection" dealer add-on crap, that you couldn't opt out of. Sleazeballs. "We're only getting 15 for the year!" I suspect the low production numbers predictions are total BS, but who knows. Its a $25K car - its not going to be super exclusive, you know? Once they start cranking these out, I think they will be made in "Miata like" numbers.
Again, all 40+ pictures I took are
avilable here. I will post info and pics as soon as we get our hands on one - within the first hour of one arriving here at the Vorshlag shop it will be corner weighed, measured, disassembled, and the rest of the car will be dissected and weighed further. We have several new FT86 specific products in mind - some will be developed before it arrives, the rest soon after. I will share them during development, too.
Cheers,