Quote:
Originally Posted by bneale
After all Chris Harris writes and drives for EVO mag and he flew all the way to Japan just to drive it for 20 minutes and loved it!
bneale
|
Chris Harris tested the car on a racetrack in Spain. In fact, all the early reviews were conducted on racetracks which tend to be smooth and represent a controlled enviorment. Journalist and high performance drivers were encouragaed to drive the car at its limits. Now the car is being released to the real world and the honeymoon seems to be somewhat over. It was just plain unrealistic to think that this car could be everything that Toyota and Subaru hype said it was. But that does not mean it is a bad car or that it cannot revive the Japanese tuner market. If anything this type of article will make enthusiast buyers more determined to tune the car to their personal liking.
If there are lessons here at all they are:
1. Do not believe the advertising department hype of any car manufacturerer, They are in the business to make money, period.
2. Toyota and Subaru overpriced the car and therefore put it within comparison range of some very good performance machines.
3. RWD is not the coming of the performance car messiah. For lower power cars FWD is not inferior to RWD on the racetrack or the street.
4. You should never test an automatic against manual shift cars in a low end sports car test like this one.