Quote:
Originally Posted by Jordanwolf
Have a look at the thread Tcoat listed, it's pretty interesting.
I think the layout of the engine is cool, but that's bias because I'm obsessed with the car. If they could've managed this car with an I4 I still would've been very interested, the dream would've been a MR car like the MR2 though.
Honest question though, where do you get the evidence/opinion that Subaru was much more involved than Toyota with the creation of this car? When I first started looking into it, I basically thought it was a Subaru and Toyota just re-branded the car, but had nothing to go off of other than it was made in a Subaru plant and they contained boxers made by Subaru(I blame marketing).
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Suspension, brakes, interior, materials, etc. are mostly either Subaru parts bin, or jointly developed for the car. Like I said, it seems like very few things were sourced specifically from Toyota (importance aside).
And the boxer layout is heavy and large, and despite having a clean sheet of paper, they still shoved the motor far forward of the front wheels. There's been countless discussions regarding better overall packaging and weight savings of an I4. Yeah, CoG is slightly lower for a bare motor, but once you start factoring all the accessory componentry being located up high, that advantage mostly goes away. I do like the accessiblity of said components. Spark plugs could have easily been made far simpler to service. And 2x the complexity of valvetrain really doesn't make a strong argument for a boxer of any type. Back when they were pushrod motors, a boxer had a lot more appeal in terms of packaging. Subaru is hanging on to them because it's how they market themselves as different from the other manufacturers...there's certainly no practical advantage to them.