I posted this story both here and on the 86 thread. It's interesting to see the different reactions. There were many more comments on the 86 thread (13 so far) than here, almost all of them pretty critical and derisive of the Daily Tourismo writer. Here there was @
spcmafia's gracious and light-hearted post.
Yes, the Daily Tourismo write-up isn't going to win a Pulitzer prize; yes, there were inconsistencies in the article; yes, the author didn't make many particularly deep new observations; and yes, it took him 7 years to 'discover' the BRZ/86.
However, what I thought was nice about the article was that the writer really just
gets it about the BRZ/86. Daily Tourismo is a site primarily about old cars. They post found classified ads and articles about classic and inexpensive sports cars - yet the author wrote about this new car. He gets it that the BRZ/86 is a new old car. It's a new car that captures the soul and spirit of the classic sports cars of the 1960's/1970's. In a world increasingly moving to floppy paddle-shifted everything, anodyne turbo engines, and (gasp!) soulless electric cars, it's a marvel that the BRZ/86 exists at all, and he gets it. Plus it's (relatively) cheap, just like the sports cars of the 60's were in their time.
I think it's also great that 7 years after the car comes out, there's someone writing a review of it. All the other traditional car magazines/blogs/etc. have long since moved on to the newest shiny thing, but Daily Tourismo's writer is giving some attention to a 7 year old model, because he understands how special it is.
Kudos to him.