[Jordan Silveira]

As Subaru of America decided to finally roll out the BRZ tS (tuned by STI) last year and now the exclusive batch of 500 are on dealer lots, some lucky individuals can now say they own one. With that, I decided it was time to acquire some of those key ingredients that make up the stateside tS. Let me just say this, I call it “stateside” because well, that’s the nice way for me to refer to the car. I won’t deep dive on the tS that’s arrived here in the states but admittedly I was a bit disappointed to see what feels like a very half-hearted attempt from what the genuine JDM tS has represented over the years. The tS making its debut in the states certainly has its positives but I just had higher hopes overall.

Anyways, while I’ve certainly been as slow as a tortoise in my OEM+ performance build journey to closing in on a tS, I feel like in the end I’m getting there slowly but surely. I have the 18-inch Enkei’s that are found on the tS, and now… I’ve finally acquired the various “flexible” braces that STI offers for the BRZ. These include the Flexible V-Bars, Flexible Tower Bar, and Flexible Draw Stiffener. I must say, without having them on the car yet to give impressions, color me “skeptical hippo” or “skeptical snake” over these “performance” braces from STI. After doing some research on the braces, I understand that the intended effect was to add flexibility in a chassis brace designed for rigidity. However, on the surface that seems awfully contradictory to what the purpose of a chassis brace is. Which is to provide rigidity to the chassis under duress while driving. I get that theoretically this should provide comfort under less stressed driving conditions, but also finely tune the chassis and provide bracing during those high intensity and demanding driving sessions. The answer however, will have to be told over time. I also picked up an STI front grille emblem to finally tack on the build progress. That’ll surely pretty up BRZ3N’s devilish smile a bit 😊!

As always, thanks again for your time and I hope you enjoi coming along for the ride. 2018 has been quite a busy year for the BRZ3N build and we aren’t stopping yet. Let the progress continue! There’s more mods to come so stick around. Until next time FT86Club!