Quote:
Originally Posted by ZDan
...I'm talking about a dual-use daily-driven vehicle. If I were talking about a track-only car I wouldn't even consider a production road car, I'd be looking at single-seat sports-racers and open-wheel cars.
Interior quality of the twins is OK with me. I like my BRZ's interior better than I liked my '11 Cayman's. I specifically didn't buy a WRX in the mid '00s because of interior so it's not like I don't care. No qualms whatsoever about my '17 PP interior. Other than extremely laggy touchscreen infotainment (don't get me started on how touchscreens with menus suck)...
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I'd disagree with you. I bought my '17 for the fun of it, as a dual-use vehicle. I accepted the interior quality issues because I wanted a lightweight, responsive car that wouldn't be expensive to modify and that wouldn't send me straight to jail if I had fun with it on the street. Like many of my previous cars might. Another option at a different price point would have been a used Elise/Exige, but there isn't much out there anymore for reasons I'll describe later.
The interior of the Twins is NOT a nice place to be for anything other than track use. Most Subarus' interiors are 10-15 years behind where they should be in terms of design, materials, or quality. Much like their engine design before they partnered with Toyota. I've looked at getting two different generations of WRX STI and couldn't stomach the interior quality. Unlike you, I think my Cayman's interior was much nicer than the BRZ's.
I do not find the head unit to be acceptable from a functionality standpoint, the stock audio/speakers (and design) sucks, the feel and look of the interior trim isn't where I'd like it to be and the quality isn't where it should be - on a 5/6 year old car with low mileage, the pleather around the instrument cluster is already loose, there are rattles and squeaks coming from everywhere, and even the dashboard crash pad is actually pleather over hard plastic.
As Dadhawk said, it's not "coddling to rich people". The US government has mandated an amount of safety equipment that prohibits passenger cars being under a certain weight and a certain cost.
Manufacturer's can't sell a car with 40% of the manufacturing cost being safety equipment because consumers won't pay $26K for a car with pedestrian impact mitigation camera system; auto-braking; front, side, and auxiliary airbag systems, drunk-driving detection system, and active whiplash mitigation head restraints; but with no aircon. That's one of the reasons manufacturers aren't selling certain models in the US, or have completely done away with them (IE Elise/Exige).
That leads to a lower bound on what manufacturers can design and product in terms of weight and cost. Lower bound on cost limits the cheapest vehicle you can sell, and that price influences what features/design/quality it has. If your cheapest model is $35,000; you'd better make your $40,000 model a bit nicer with more features, and your $50,000 model a bit more than that. So yeah, cars are heavier. Most of it is directly or indirectly due to government regulations on what safety features vehicles have to have combined with consumers not buying expensive cars with poor features in the name of being light.
PS: I don't really think Porsche is making porkers. You can't judge today's cars weight against 70s/80s cars weight, because those things were/are deathtraps.