[Tcoat]

In fairness to Rich I think he was asking about the more long term viability of the car than yet another "the next model year will have xxxx" rumour.


The "drop: in sales is exactly what I would expect to see in a new model car. The first year would be huge with everybody that followed development. The following year would still be strong as the cars get out on the street and are seen and then you will see a drop off as the market for them stabilizes. After 3 or 4 years (now) used ones will start to come up in numbers and that will impact the sales numbers even higher. It is important to note that they are still selling what they makes since they anticipate this and planned the builds around it. It would be a much bigger concern if there were fields of tem parked in storage since they were not moving but from what I can find that is not the case.


Whatever changes are planned were planned back in 2009 or earlier. People don't understand how long something as simple as a different antenna or dash trim take to put into place. The manufacturers don't look at each years sales and decide what they are going to do for the next model year this all happens at least 3 years in advance. It is not as simple as saying "oh we only sold 100 this year we better make 80 next and let's throw some new knobs on it to try to juice it up". Someplace there is a massive chart planning out every single change from concept to end of model that will include refreshes and numbers built. They will not deviate from that plan unless something drastic happens. Look at the Aztek for example. They knew it was a turd on wheels and had to sell it below cost just to get rid of it yet they continued to make it for 5 years since the contracts were all in place and it would have cost them more to drop it than to make it and immediately scrap tem all. This is how much the pre planning effects the auto industry.


As far as what changes they will make go that could be a bad news story for many of the people here but great news for the public in general. This is a very specialized vehicle and was originally designed for a very specific type of driver. There are only so many of type of driver around so they need to expand the market. Since the "more power" crowd is a sub group of the existing market that is not the direction they are likely to go in. They are much more likely to head more to the "average Joe". This means more features, less raw, and lowering overall performance. I believe we have already seen this beginning to happen with the suspension changes (not saying they are "worse" just tamed a bit) over the 15 and 16 models. The supposedly "luxury" features of the RS2 are very telling as to what direction I think we will see the cargo. Eventually the car will get bigger and heavier to accommodate the comfort features as we saw with many of the sports models to proceeded it.


I do think a version of the STi and maybe a TRD will show up at some point. However these will be limited numbers and will not actually be built to satisfy the performance crowd but to sell more base models. Mustang GTs are about10% of the Mustang production with the rest made up by the lower level performers. They are made so that Mrs Retired School Teacher can have a Mustang that meets her low level performance needs but still looks like a race car. There is no money to be made in the performance level cars for most of the manufacturers (Porsche, Ferrari, etc don't count since that is all they make) and their bread and butter is making higher volumes of the cars that look like their performers. This is what the STi will be meant to do. It will bring average people in the door and when they gasp in shock at the price the sales guy will say " ahhh but over here is the BRZ limited. It is the same thing only a little less power and is half the price".


In summary; will the car survive? Probably. Will it survive as it is? Probably not.