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Old 12-06-2020, 04:37 PM   #1083
Red-86
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Originally Posted by AnalogMan View Post
But the body has gone from being pretty/borderline beautiful to an disharmonious mix of dissimilar design elements (curves mixed with Chris Bangle-like creases mixed with the biggest sills I've ever seen on a production car).
The styling of the new BRZ is definitely a bit off. The way I would summarise the evolution is like this: A lot of people bought a 1st generation BRZ because of its looks. A lot of people will buy a 2nd generation BRZ despite its looks.

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The more I think about the engine, the more I like it. I love the idea of a modestly bigger, moderately but meaningfully torquier, bigger displacement naturally aspirated engine.
I am reserving judgement until I can test drive it. How it feels and sounds to drive is more important to me than bench racing numbers. The reason I was not a fan of the 1st gen FA20D was not the numbers, but how it felt to drive.

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So many of the remaining IC cars these days seem to be moving to the ubiquitous turbo formula. It's a cheap, quick, and dirty way of getting good 'numbers'.
To be fair, if it is done right, as Porsche have done in the 911 Carrera range, a turbo engine can be made to feel almost like a NA engine. It can still rev high, make peak power up top, and have a meaty mid range. It’s all in the design and tuning.

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And the sound of a turbo... that strangled, choked sound... like an asthmatic Italian grandmother struggling up a long flight of stairs...
Well, the NA FA20D could fit that description too. Just being NA doesn’t guarantee a nice engine note. It takes specific component design and tuning to achieve a pleasing sound, and that costs money... money I am not sure Subaru and Toyota wanted to spend. The twins are no LFA after all.

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IC cars days are numbered. We're moving to a soulless transportation future of anodyne, bland electric transportation pods that will get even more dystopian with full autonomy. Those might be 'efficient' by some calculations, but they sure as hell won't be any fun. They will be appliances, nothing more.
Well, most cars (especially the ubiquitous SUVs that have taken over our roads) are already soulless appliances. I still hold out some hope that there will be affordable sports coupes available in future, even if they have to be EVs.

Fully electric sports cars will, of course, not sound like ICE ones. This will be a huge loss to the driving experience, even if they handle and accelerate better.

I have actually thought they could get around this by producing special ‘hybrid’ sports cars where the electric engines provide most or all the power to drive the car, but a small little IC engine is included (ideally mid rear engined, right behind the front seats) to power ancillaries and help recharge the batteries. Of course, the little IC engine would also be tuned to provide a pleasing engine note. Since it doesn’t need to propel the car the IC engine could be very small and thus fuel efficient. I can’t fully claim credit for this idea, I believe Mazda was toying with this idea to make a new rotary RX car feasible (i.e. the rotary engine would be a range extender and used to recharge the main batteries, as well as provide an engine to listen to for the driver).

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We should celebrate any even small joys in the waning days of IC cars and especially manual transmissions.
We should indeed.
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AnalogMan (12-06-2020), Dadhawk (12-07-2020), Lantanafrs2 (12-06-2020), Willpower (12-06-2020)