Quote:
Originally Posted by fatoni
thte car doesnt even exist yet. how can you say its not a competitor? the itr was fwd and had less hp but i would say that if it was new it would be a competitor
what makes you think that? the only precedent i can think of is the miata and while there were many attempts to upstage the little guy, it has remained basically the same. when they tried to come out with a turbo version, it sold poorly
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What makes me think that?? The STi/Evo battle... Both cars were sought after by the US market for a long time before they were brought here. Subaru announced that the WRX was coming to America in 1999 and it would have 227 hp, within a year Mitsubishi announced the EVO VIII was coming to america and said it would have 275HP or so. WHY? because they were nearly direct competitors. Mitsubishi knew that if Subaru was selling cars, they were giving up business because they had a car that was such a close competitor... they upped the ante a little and boom. Shortly there after, Subaru announced they were bringing the STi to America and it would have more power than the EVO.
You are right, several companies tried to bring a small convertible to market and none of them competed properly with the MX-5, but I think that is a very niche market... the number of people that want a 2 seat convertible is small... much smaller than the number that would want a 2+2 coupe. One could even say that the FT-86 twins are already scavenging sales from the Genesis coupe market... I think Hyundai thinks so too... which is why the new Genesis coupe 2.0T was bumped to 270 hp.