[Ganthrithor]

I was stuck for a while trying to decide between a BRZ and a 135i (similar enough to the 335 that I imagine the scenario is p much identical).

In the end I went for the BRZ since I figured what I'll lose in depreciation on the BRZ over the next few years I would have lost in mods to the 135 anyway (it drives so much nicer with a revised suspension / wheels / tires that I don't think I could have put those mods off for long, and I would have considered a Dinan exhaust entirely non-optional). Since you'll never get the cost of your mods back when selling a car, I figured the money-pit factor would be pretty similar for both cars, with the exception of maintenance stuff.

I figured just keeping a BMW supplied with things like tires and brakes would be considerably more expensive, and god forbid anything went seriously awry with a 135 because that would get expensive very quickly. My VW is expensive enough to work on and its a German econo-box.

In the end, I figured the BRZ would cost me a lot less to run (you literally only have to replace tires for the first three years, and they're the same size tires as my GTI-- aka inexpensive) and I wouldn't have to worry about it blowing up on me. It's always worring buying a used car, especially a 135 as they seem to be a real spoiled rich-kid's plaything / drag car. I was really worried about how hard most of them would have been flogged. Maybe that's not as big of a problem with the 335 since I suppose that caters to a more mature demographic, but it was a worry nonetheless.

I also decided that the BRZ would probably be better for my long-term health, since the N54-powered BMWs are so ridiculously fast / capable, especially once you've sorted the suspension out. I've driven a pretty heavily modified 135 quite a bit, and it's wicked fun and wicked fast, but jesus-- saying its hard not to speed in that car is a gross understatement. Its really easy to end up doing 90 on the freeway by accident, but the really unnerving thing is how the car tends to goad you into going incredibly quickly on back roads. We've got one really twisty section of road that runs through the foothills in my hometown that's a 35 zone marked for 15-25 mph corners and the car just wants to do 40+ through the corners and wants to hit 80 between some of them. It's kind if ridiculous.

It's not a problem of car control (I'm pretty comfortable with this aspect-- especially on roads I know well-- and the car handles wonderfully), the problem is other drivers-- people just do all kinds of boneheaded shit on the road. When you're zipping around at those speeds it just creates huge differentials between your speed and those around you, and other people just don't seem to be able to grasp what's going on. In addition to it becoming very difficult to react to normal idiocy (people on the wrong side / slopping across the road around blind corners, etc) you start getting lots of people who will, for example, pull up to a junction with the road you're on, come to a stop, look directly at you, see you bearing down on them at 60 mph, and then pull their Prius out into the road 150 feet in front of you doing 15 mph. It happens to me all the time. I don't think most people actually try to interpret speeds on the road-- they just look at distances and assume you're driving whatever speed they usually drive and estimate things accordingly.

Hmm. BMW problems.

Anyway, long story short I thought it would be better to buy a car that would be worry-free, cheaper to maintain, and would be fun to drive at saner speeds, so I went with the BRZ. I know for a fact that I will miss the sounds and that absolutely monstrous engine (420ft/lbs never gets old) -- not to mention the straightforward but high-quality cabin-- but I also know from driving my GTI and a few other cars I get to drive on occasion that it's also very rewarding to drive something that you can absolutely hammer on a regular basis, and the BRZ seems like that kind of car. You should still be able to steer it on the throttle all day long, but when Prius guy pulls out 100 feet ahead of you you'll just peel off 10-15 mph, get slightly aggravated, and not really care instead of having to threshold-brake and wonder about why the world keeps trying to kill you.