[ayau]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

Well I finally test drove the BRZ and WRX today. The salesperson at the dealer seemed like he totally hated his job and didn't want to sell a car at all lol, complained that I was shifting the gears too much. "If you drive like that we won't have a transmission in a week." Says the guy slipping the clutch at 3000rpm to reverse the car into a parking spot and redlining a cold, brand new engine.

Anyhow...I really miss my MR2. The BRZ is light-years ahead in refinement, the engine response is way better but it's just not nearly as fun. I can't hear the engine at all (which I guess can be fixed pretty easily) and the car just feels bigger and less nimble. Hell, the rear seats are even barely usable, unlike the 911.

I was pleasantly surprised by the engine, which revs very freely and is pretty smooth. The gear shifter was so-so, a little rubbery for my taste (I prefer shifters that "click") making some gears a little hard to find. I didn't like the brake pedal at all. Steering seemed pretty good. The interior is a hundred times better than my MR2 so no complaints at all. Clutch is super weird, need to get used to it to shift smoothly.

The WRX had a very nice gear shift and a very nice clutch pedal, but the high seating position and high windows kind ruin the sporty feel. I had never driven a turbo car before, but now I know what turbo lag is, it's definitely there even if they claim 90% of torque is available at blah rpm. I was surprised by how slow the car was, I was expecting a lot more knowing the numbers, and I was surprised by how heavy the flywheel was. They mapped the throttle so that the rpms jump very fast off idle but the revs fall very slowly so you either take all your upshifts very slowly or get a nasty jerk from the fat flywheel. Another problem is that seeing the low 6000s rev limit on the tach feels kind of limiting lol.

All said and done, I'm not totally happy with the BRZ but I am probably going to get one since it's a nice balance of utility and fun. Someday I'll get back into a more hardcore car again when it's more convenient to keep 2 cars around.

The MY15 WRX shifter is way too rubbery compared to the BRZ IMO. Also, heel toe rev matching is more difficult on the WRX compared to drive by cable. There seems to be a half second lag between blipping the throttle and the RPM actually going up. The RPMs respond almost immediately on my ITR when I blip the throttle, lol. With that said, I still prefer the WRX as my daily driver compared to the BRZ and ITR. Crash safety standards alone is enough for me to not daily a 90s Japanese car.