Quote:
Originally Posted by SVTSHC
Yeah but think about it like this. Say you're in the left lane and the speed limit is 65, now giving the person the benefit of the doubt cause I know I get annoyed when someones only doing 5 over and they're in the left lane; say you want to past said person doing 70 cause you want to be doing 85. Is there really that tremendous of a difference between having a ton of power and simply downshifting two gears and hitting a higher rev range where this car makes it's peak HP? It's literally the difference of a fraction of a second unless you were planning on cutting someone off for the sake of overtaking them.
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First, having a higher horsepower car has absolutely nothing to do with how big of an ass a particular driver is. I've seen as many jack asses driving in civics and camrys as I have mustangs. Age has by far a greater correlation to how stupid someone is on the road.
Now to address your question, yes there is a difference. It's the reason that most people end up buying a sports car. They want performance. A truly good sports car has both great handling and good power. If I'm driving a corolla, I expect to have to make that downshift, if I'm driving a sports car I don't. It's all about expectations. In a time when an affordable 4 door family sedan can hit 60 in ~6 seconds expectations are higher for a sports car.
For those of us that grew up with the Supra, 300ZX, RX-7, etc we want both parts of the performance equation because we know it can be done affordably. All of those cars existed for several generations before they ultimately got out of control with the price. For example, the first gen
Supra (non-turbo) had 200hp from a NA straight 6 in 1986. Your average family sedan at the time with GM's 3800 V6 was putting out 140hp.
The only "successful" sports car which could have been considered under powered (during its time not compared to now) is the miata. That is a tough act to duplicate and I personally don't think Toyota/Subaru are going to bank on being able to do it. They are following typical new model procedure. Hype the car up and release the base model and sell as many as you can. A year later introduce the convertible version and reel in all the new buyers. Finally, release a higher performance version and reel in even more customers. In the case of this car, I can see Subaru releasing an STI version and Toyota introducing a convertible version at the same time. It would further differentiate the products and for some reason I just don't see Subaru introducing a convertible in the US.