Originally Posted by AnalogMan
There's been a lot of discussion and speculation about the engine in the next-gen car, and how much power it might, and should, have. We've all seen and heard the endless bitching about how under-powered the current car is (often from people who have never actually driven it), and how the only thing it needs is 'more power'.
Yeah, I get it... 'more power' is always 'better'. What car couldn't be improved with 'more power'? Everybody always wants 'more power'.
But to play devil's advocate and take a contrarian if not heretical point of view for a moment... how much power do you really need in a BRZ/86? For typical street driving and not the 'track'? Let's face it, most people spend most of their time in the car on the street, regardless of 'track day' fantasies and wishes (for true track rats, this doesn't apply, you're in a separate league with different needs).
The BRZ/86 is a cheap, entry-level sports car. It's not a supercar. It's not a muscle car. It's supposed to be a way to have fun for not much money. If you spend most of the time driving on the street, how much 'power' do you actually need?
My relatively advanced age no doubt has a lot to do with this, but my 'track days' are long behind me. I drive my car exclusively on the street. I don't care about the 'numbers'. I care more about how a car feels for me to drive, how my ass reacts to being in the seat, and not bragging about the 0-60 or other meaningless 'numbers' to people in a bar or gym club. Every time I drive my car (like I did today), it strikes me that it has enough power to be fun, to feel fun for me in any street driving I'm likely to do without attracting attention from the law and risking my license.
To those that will moan, 'but a hot Camry will outrun it!', I say, so what? How often are you going to try to race Camrys? Is that really what you do most of the time? Try to pick street races with Camrys or other cars? Really??? Again, it's no doubt my advanced age, but I'm long past high-school days of street racing other kids to see who can get to the next stop light the fastest. I just want a car to feel fast enough to be fun for my butt in the seat going down the road and around twisty turns. I don't care at all how the 'numbers' of what I drive compare to other cars on the road as long as I'm having fun driving it. I don't derive any part of my self-esteem from the 'numbers' of the car I drive. I don't care what anyone else thinks of the car I drive (except my wife). The only person whose opinion on my car matters is mine.
When I bought my car, I was certain I was going to spend money to squeeze a little more power out of it. I was set on buying headers, exhaust, and a tune. But the more I drive it, the less I think I'll do that. I might still get a tune to smooth out the power delivery and response, but the car feels fun to me as it is.
Being an old guy, I probably have different expectations and reference set for this car than some others might. I grew up driving the sports cars of the 1960s and 1970s. They were great fun to me back then, and I wanted something that would capture the feeling of those cars, but with a dose of greater comfort, reliability, and safety. Yeah, I was on a nostalgia trip, and wanted a return visit (don't laugh, when you get to be in your 60's, you might be craving nostalgia too). The BRZ does that pretty well.
It's all what a person is used to. I was used to the 100-ish hp sports cars of the 60s/70s, so the BRZ stacks up pretty well in comparison. Just for laughs, these are the horsepower outputs of some of the popular sports cars back then (I owned all of these back in the 70s):
Opel GT 1.1: 67 hp
Opel GT 1.9: 102 hp
VW Karmann Ghia: 53 hp
1970 MGB: 91 hp
1968 Fiat 124: 94 hp
1967 Triumph TR4: 104 hp
1968 Sunbeam Alpine: 106 hp
1968 Alfa Romeo 1750 GTV: 120 hp
The 'big' Healey, the 1968 Austin Healey 3000 with the 3 liter 6 cylinder engine, put out a whopping 150 hp. And the supercar of the time, the 1972 Porsche 911S, put out 190 hp.
The 205 hp of the BRZ/86 doesn't seem so lacking in comparison to those. The 'numbers' of the BRZ (0-60, top speed, 1/4 mile, whatever you like) would be unimaginable to us back in the 60s/70s driving the sports cars of the time. Even 'pure race' modified 2 liter sports cars of that time couldn't come close to the performance of a stock BRZ today.
The car the BRZ reminds me the most of is the Opel GT. I owned two of them back in the 70's, the 1.9 102 hp version. I never felt those cars lacked for power back then. They were cheap sports cars, and I had a blast driving them. The BRZ has twice the power they did, as well as much more comfort, reliability, safety, and fuel mileage.
Of course it would be nice if the next-gen car was turbocharged and had 260-ish hp. But it won't. And to me that's perfectly OK. The current car is fine for me just as it is, and I'll keep having fun driving it for as long as my aging knees can get into it and shift it.
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