BRZ/FRS TOO LOW??

[Turkish]

curbs are your only real enemy unless you lower the car.

[ZionsWrath]

I drive in NYC and surrounding every day. Have not bottomed out or scratched my front bumper. It does look like shit from all the rock chips though. You'd need to live on some real shit roads for the clearance to be an issue.

[qqzj]

Planning to own it 15 years is too optimistic. Most cars start break down piece by piece around 12 years. That is my experience anyway.

Originally Posted by carma143

Over the past few months I've been searching for my first car, one that is fun to drive, has a manual variant, has higher than average mpg, and can last a long time without high repair costs (15+ years). From the information I can gather online, the BRZ seems like the best choice. The one problem I have is that there are many small hills near where I live. I'm afraid the front chin of the car will get scraped more often than not.

So my question is whether a BRZ/FRS can get easily scraped when driving over bumps in the road or flat roads that almost instantly turn into hills.

any input will be greatly appreciated.

[N1rve]

I'm on stock height right now. I've been able to clear MOST dips but not ALL. Those parking stops? Forget it... They will ALMOST always win.

Drive ways? There are some I'll scrape and some I don't.

[carma143]

Originally Posted by qqzj

Planning to own it 15 years is too optimistic. Most cars start break down piece by piece around 12 years. That is my experience anyway.

I'm optimistic because my mom owned a 1993 Jeep Cherokee until 2011 when she bought her 2010 Toyota Highlander. My dad still owns a 1993 Saturn wagon that still works great today. only things that went out that had to be replaced were the transmission and something else that was not more than $1500

If you had the chance for your first car to not be a bad running, boring car, wouldn't you want to try and keep your first car for as long as possible? That's my philosophy.

[Indestruct]

I scrape entering driveways... and be careful of those parking stall blocks... go too forward and you lose your bumper... But overall I stopped caring after the first scrape....

[Liehtw8]

I live in Northern Alberta. We have extremely cold winters that cause massive frost heaves and pot holes everywhere. I am lowered on Eibach sportlines and very rarely touch. I wouldn't worry to much about it. Thought it was going to be bad once I lowered it but it turns out it's not as bad as I expected. If you put a lip on you'll run into issues in some areas, but it's nothing that should determine whether or not you should buy one.

[Frost]

Has anyone measured what the STOCK front lip ground clearance is? Someone is offering to house my car for free but his driveway has an INSANE gradient.

[Bradley_stockstill]

I daily my frs, and i'm quite low. I do scrape, but its nothing that concerns me when its just the underside of the bumper/lipkit. now i dont reccomend going as low as i am unless you are experienced with driving really low vehicles, and the key to getting in and out of places with steep inclines is the angle at which you go in at, the more horizontal you can get to the drive way or incline before you actually have to start turning in, the better.

The roads where i live are quite bad in some places, Especially New Orleans and Lafayette, LA. i don't think you'll have as many problems as you think. I personally cant get in everywhere or turn in every driveway, but i know my limitations and i have never had an issue scraping with stock ride height. even if its a horrible incline, if you pay attention or go in at an angle, you should be fine.

pic for reference on my ground clearance

[eurominican]

Lowered on eibach sportlines and I've not yet scraped a single time in over 8 months

Sent from my SM-N900P using Tapatalk

[qqzj]

I think the car might be too low for a different reason. Suppose you are in an SUV in a parking lot and there are cars on both sides. When you want to back off, you turn around and look through the back window, and check the side mirror etc. It might be hard for u to spot a BRZ coming. Then you back out of the parking spot and you are very surprised there was such a low and small car behind u.

This happened to me already, of course, I was the other driver. Pretty sad.

[Ganthrithor]

Originally Posted by qqzj

I think the car might be too low for a different reason. Suppose you are in an SUV in a parking lot and there are cars on both sides. When you want to back off, you turn around and look through the back window, and check the side mirror etc. It might be hard for u to spot a BRZ coming. Then you back out of the parking spot and you are very surprised there was such a low and small car behind u.

No, the problem is SUV drivers driving retarded land-boats and not looking where they're going. As usual. "Oh, I should look in a mirror before I back up?" "Those painted lines on the road mean things?" "What do you mean it's unsafe to be doing 85 in a 65 while swerving across the freeway without signaling on balding, three-year-old all-seasons?" For christ's sake the new ones are festooned with fucking cameras covering every angle and they still manage to hit things in parking lots. You can't cure stupid.

It's hard to spot most vehicles coming in parking lots when you have an oil-tanker-sized SUV to either side of you. That's why you inch out incredibly slowly when you can't see anything, and keep an eye on what's directly behind you as you do so. If I can back out of parking spaces like that without incident in a BRZ (a car where the b/c pillars block literally your entire view out the corners) then SUV drivers sure as shit could do the same thing in their cars, if they could be bothered to pay attention to what they were doing.

I'm picking on SUV drivers here because you brought them up. The truth is, most people driving most kinds of cars don't pay enough attention to what they're doing in parking lots. They pull out of spots really quickly and they cruise down the parking lot lanes way, way too fast. When you're cruising down the lot and there's a Suburban hanging out of its parking space, guess what? You should slow the fuck down because you have no idea what's on the far side of that SUV, and something very well could come flying out of that spot right into the front of your car as you pass by. Everyone should do things slowly where visibility is restricted.

[uEih]

Pretty much like everyone here, I don't scrape much on stock height. I've manage to scrape once and it kills me a bit but it's under the bumper so at least it's not visible. That one time I scraped was because a very steep exit going out to a road that was steeper than normal. I did go sideways and it still scraped. I now avoid parking lots that looks questionable. So if you're going to go lower you might not be able to make it into some parking lots and barely make it and might scrape a bit on stock height.

[ncmx5]

Its fine for me just about everywhere but I have to be really careful which parking lots I can get in and out off...