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Originally Posted by why?
Not strip out, replace. A bunch of parts are shared with their other cars, but not all of them. Wheels, brakes, everything down there can easily be changed for what is on the base impreza, just keep the suspension points the same so all the aftermarket stuff would still fit.
They could do the same throughout the car. Steering wheel, seats, stereo, etc. While they share a lot of parts with the other cars, there are some obvious ones that are just for the 86.
Also while the engine is nice, it is just a glorified impreza engine anyways. Not sure if that would lower costs though, but if it did just use the base impreza engine.
Basically they should just make a base version of the car, use all the least expensive parts they have to cut the price.
The Impreza starts at $18,495. Surely they could take enough cost out of the 86 to lower the price to $20k. The resulting car might be more of a commuter car than a sports car, but that is what a lot of the base cars use to be anyways.
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Even replacing parts, there just isn’t the nearly $6k worth of savings needed to bring it to this magical $20k mark. The RWD layout and differences in the chassis and sheet metal account for a lot of the price difference over an Impreza. The interior is not any nicer (except the alcantara seats in the Limited trim) in the twins than an Impreza and the factory stereo in the twins is already garbage. For the smaller niche within what is already a niche market that would be satisfied with the 152 hp Impreza engine, I don’t think it would be worth the manufacturers time for the assembly line changes that would be need to install all of the alternative parts. Call it a glorified Impreza engine if you like, but it makes 53 more horsepower than in the Impreza... and too many people already complain about the 200-205 horsepower that the twins make now. We are all entitled to our opinions, but I just don’t think that swapping a few parts out for Impreza parts would lower the price enough or increase sales enough to matter when Toyota/Subaru never expected these cars to sale in mass volumes to begin with.