[bdbx18]

As a half a century old owner, I'd like to think of my BRZ as my little red Alfa. Except much more reliable.

I stopped my car modding days about twenty years ago and I still cringe when I think of all the money I would have saved if I had not blown it on mods, trade-ins, depreciation and car purchases (among many other acts). I still do my own maintenance on our cars and my BRZ has not been to a dealer yet at 17k miles.

Still, that doesn't stop me from thinking about more torque, more power and so I peruse these pages for the low-cost, simple bolt-on solution. Which evidently does not exist when one tries to read between the lines. You see, most are not whiners like me. While others are not about to admit defeat to think or say they've made a bad decision about the purchase. They will attempt to chase and 'fix' it and subsequently lowering the expectation bar over time. The justification then becomes the norm that to get a FI solution that yields an additional 50hp, you'll be expected to add this and/or fix this at regular intervals.

As one gets older, we will all arrive with different priorities, mortgage, bills, kids, caretaking, travel e.g. With the younger FRS/BRZ owners, the car is literally everything they have, their 'baby', so they pour all their resources on her. In reply, the after-market is more than willing to draw up glossy marketing ads and graphs to answer the demand. In my day, an Honda engineer once replied to my inquiry about an after-market header that it is ludicrous to think that my OEM NSX header was so poorly designed to restrict the same 15hp I was hoping to regain. Or the second guessing that says the manufacturer with the vast engineering force does not know as much about cost benefits and reliability of additional power.

That said, for many it is not the end-result but the 'journey' itself that is gratifying. Years ago, I was an audiophile that did almost fall into the abyss if not for a limited bank account. The wake-up call came not from my wife but actually from the stereo shop guy who said perhaps I should just enjoy the music from my very nice system instead of contemplating another costly new Apogee speaker and Audio Research power-amp setup. So sometimes, we do lose sight of the forest and instead focus on the trees thereby missing the whole 'intent'.

My BRZL is still stock except for the blacked out wheels, tint, armrest, opti-coat e.g. I would love to get new tires so I don't slide that much in the canyons and a FI solution so I can outrun that pesky Camry V6. But history has proven at least to myself, that stock is good, even better and I don't need the headache nor the expense when there are other things to spend time and money on.