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Originally Posted by White Shadow
the enthusiast market is very small
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Exactly why it makes no business sense to throw money into R&D to cater to an even smaller niche of the very small enthusiast market.
Quote:
Originally Posted by White Shadow
Also, the car would not require a wider body/track/wheelbase or any of that nonsense. Mazda didn't do that when they turbocharged the MX-5 Miata. Why? Well, it wasn't necessary. I'm not talking about a 400-HP BRZ here, I'm talking about adding maybe 80-100 HP with a small factory turbo that will give the car great low-end torque.
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Well, that's Mazda - the company that turbo'd and flagshipped the rotary. And the Mazdaspeed turbo only added +36 hp AND it was their flagship model ANDDD the turbo came after how many generations of Miatas?
With Toyota as the primary stakeholder, +80-100 Toyota OEM hp (the weary company that dealt with snap oversteer from their MR2 days and sticky gas pedals now) is more a matter of liability and how to engineer the chassis around that power than a simple bolt-in. MR2 Spyder owners hoped and prayed for a 2ZZ Spyder to come out. Never happened. We just did the swap ourselves. Same deal will play out with the FA20 turbo. Now +40 hp seems more feasible. But I don't even see that happening because Toyota/Subaru have other flagships/priorities (as stated in my prior post) coming down the pipeline. What a niche of a niche of enthusiasts wants =/= what those companies want. We're asking for too much, too soon.