Question for BRZ and GT-87 hps?

[NERO]

I find it funny that so many people were eating this guy alive for creating another thread for something that's already been answered. One would think that someone would just say search, or find a link to the info and then the thread would have ended. There are now 7 pages and 128 posts of shit that might not have anything to do with the original question.

[tachi1247]

Originally Posted by NERO

I find it funny that so many people were eating this guy alive for creating another thread for something that's already been answered. One would think that someone would just say search, or find a link to the info and then the thread would have ended. There are now 7 pages and 128 posts of shit that might not have anything to do with the original question.

a large number of the threads on the site are just like this. People get off on a tangent that has little or nothing to do with the title. The pricing info thread is talking about tire diameters to figure out if the car can hit 62 mph in 2nd gear.

[Max Schnell]

This car fits well in Japan where small is good and there are tons of twisty mountain roads to enjoy the handling on. In most of US most of the turns you will be making will be 90 degree ones at the end of a long straight.

I spend my daily drive either stuck in traffic going 5-15mph or cruising along at 70-80. I make a total of 3 left turns and 3 right turns through 19 miles of driving each way. While in theory a great handling car would be fun to drive I think I get very little chance to enjoy the handling. In the mean time I have to merge at least three times onto highway traffic where no one gives you a break. When the lady in the Explorer accelerates to snuff me while I try to merge on I do appreciate having enough power to get to speed faster and not get squeezed onto the shoulder while trying to hit 50mph.

Different situation for different people but in my case I do appreciate the power my cars have. In that light I personally would prefer this car to have more power. If it was 2200lbs then 200hp is great. 2800lbs not so much. That being said it is also not terribly bad either.

[Corey]

Unfortunately I don't have the time or patience to address every reply individually but I'll summarize my thoughts as follows.

Please don't put words in my mouth. All I said was that saying that more power was useless on the street was clearly erroneous.

Useless? That's a stretch and more likely an argument of semantics than anything. You can make up all sorts of unrealistic situations where a hundred more horsepower would save your life or something silly like that so at best it's debatable, but I'll humor you. Let's look at the 370Z as an example as that has quite a bit of power. If you could survey the owner of every 370Z and see how often they used the entire potential of the engine the answer would be well below 1%. If we're actually talking peak horsepower the number would be astronomically low, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say simply "at full throttle" since the area under the power curves is what's important blah blah etc. Anyway, 1% is obvious as the vast majority of any driver's time is spent waiting at stop lights, in traffic, cruising on the highway, etc. This number is likely true even for the most spirited of drivers and weekend warriors, nevermind all the people who bought the car for other reasons. Even on the average track you'd be very surprised at how little time the engine is producing its maximum potential power.

Now let's take that 1% of the time the car is driven at full throttle and estimate how much of that occurs during street driving (since the argument you're making is that more power is not useless for daily driving) and how of that percentage, how much is necessary to achieve some goal that 200hp could not have.

The answer, quite simply, is zero.

I'm sure you're thinking I'm just pulling numbers out of thin air, and I absolutely am, but without advocating severely breaking the law there is simply no argument to be made that will justify having more power in a street going car. If you having 300 hp vs 200 hp is the difference in being able to pass someone then you're driving recklessly, potentially a felony offense. End of story, especially yours if you are caught doing it. Some simple physics calculations will show you that in any given situation in which an extra hundred horsepower would save you from a collision or some other outlandish situation, the amount of time to be "gained" from the added power is minute fractions of a second, far below what you'd have gained by simply paying more attention while driving. You don't use your full attention to drive, nor do I, nor does anyone else on the planet. I will assure you that improving how you drive is a much better use of your time, effort and money than any amount of added power. The only argument left is that of laziness: you don't want to downshift, you don't want to rev the engine up, etc. Guess what? This isn't the car for you.

Am I arguing that the car shouldn't have more power? No.

Some people will spend ungodly amounts of money and produce astronomical numbers with the car, and if that's their prerogative then more power to them.

What I am saying is that daily driving is NOT any sort of justification for it to have more power. There are a lot of factors that went into determing the performance of the car, perhaps chief among them being price. And this is the thing that many people seem to be missing. They understand that more power means more money, and maybe are even willing to pay more money for it. What they are missing is that Toyota/Subaru is not marketing this car to those people. There are already plenty of cars in that segment for you to choose from. Would you go on a Ferrari board and complain that they are too expensive? Would you go on a Honda Civic board and complain that you can't comfortably fit 8 people and your dog? Probably not. So why would you come here and complain that this car doesn't have enough power when there's plenty of alternatives in your price range that are better suited to your interests?

This car is not for people looking to spend 35k.
This car is not for people looking for 300 horsepower without extensive modifications.

It is what it is. Many, many people will buy this car and drive it for years to come without ever touching it beyond basic maintanence. Others will modify it to make gobs of power and do whatever else they want or need. But if this car is not what you want and doing extra work beyond initial purchase does not interest you then do not buy. Take it or leave it, we will not miss you.

[OrbitalEllipses]

Originally Posted by Corey

Even on the average track you'd be very surprised at how little time the engine is producing its maximum potential power.

And that's why you need a lot of power, so that you have more down low!

[Corey]

Originally Posted by OrbitalEllipses

And that's why you need a lot of power, so that you have more down low!

They could have tuned the car for torque down low at the cost of high end but considering horsepower is a function of torque and RPM it makes a lot more sense to tune for the high end from a performance point of view. On a track you can generally keep the engine in a somewhat ideal RPM band so it's irrelevant. On the street it means you probably have to downshift more often. Apparently that's too much to ask some people.

[SUB-FT86]

Originally Posted by Max Schnell

This car fits well in Japan where small is good and there are tons of twisty mountain roads to enjoy the handling on. In most of US most of the turns you will be making will be 90 degree ones at the end of a long straight.

I spend my daily drive either stuck in traffic going 5-15mph or cruising along at 70-80. I make a total of 3 left turns and 3 right turns through 19 miles of driving each way. While in theory a great handling car would be fun to drive I think I get very little chance to enjoy the handling. In the mean time I have to merge at least three times onto highway traffic where no one gives you a break. When the lady in the Explorer accelerates to snuff me while I try to merge on I do appreciate having enough power to get to speed faster and not get squeezed onto the shoulder while trying to hit 50mph.

Different situation for different people but in my case I do appreciate the power my cars have. In that light I personally would prefer this car to have more power. If it was 2200lbs then 200hp is great. 2800lbs not so much. That being said it is also not terribly bad either.

This is what I have been saying all along. In Georgia where I live it's like this too. If handling is the biggest thing going for this car then I would have to go to a track to enjoy it. I can easily see people easily getting bored of this car unless they live near some nice twisty back roads. My RSX is the same way until I see a nice curve here and there.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by SUB-FT86

...In Georgia where I live it's like this too. If handling is the biggest thing going for this car then I would have to go to a track to enjoy it. I can easily see people easily getting bored of this car unless they live near some nice twisty back roads. ....

I can attest to this since I live in near Atlanta. As you would expect, here even the beltway only turns to the left and everybody thinks they are <fill in their favorite Nascar driver here>

Fortunately for me, I do live right on the edge of "civilization" so by going North or West of my house I'm in the back roads! I've been timing some of them on my 919 to see how close I can get to those times in the FRS.

[tachi1247]

1% of cars may hit the max hp during daily driving but since were making up percentages I'll say that 80% probably hit max torque at every stoplight save for an s2000 and this car where that figure occurs at 6000rpm.

The highest percentage of people live in urban areas than at any other time in history. Start andstop driving is a fact of life and that is only going to get worse. 1% of these cars will ever see a track so the idea of keeping the car in the prope rev range by shifting is a moot point. The simple fact is a better balance of low end torque and maximum hp would probably appeal to a wider range of people.

The last 2 sports cars released in this country with anemic torque figures have both failed. Where is my second gen rx-8? The 370z doesn't have this problem and is selling well enough to continue being produced. At least honda tried to address the problem in the s2k by adding displacement, but it wasn't enough to save the car. It doesn't matter what kindof roads they have in japan, the us market is the primary one for this car and the others mentioned. If it doesn't sell here it gets cancelled. I hope that isn't the case for this car, and I'm not too worried as I still think the fa-20dit motor will find its way under the hood.

[MrBonus]

Originally Posted by LSxJunkie

I don't disagree. I get it. This is a great "my first sports car."

Well, isn't that a backhanded slight on the entire community if I ever heard one.

[SUB-FT86]

Originally Posted by LSxJunkie

Thanks for the wall of text. I'm not sure why you got so offended though, seeing as I've ended almost every post with "that's not what this car is about, I don't think it needs any more power."

I'm pretty sure, once again, that you're misreading what I'm writing. Someone ELSE said that any more power (in any car, his example was a 335i) was absolutely useless. I disagreed. I am of the opinion that it makes driving, especially driving in tight traffic at 75mph, which is what generally happens around here, much more convenient. All driving is about power under curve. And torque. And I would know. I drove a 300hp G35 for every day for three years, and a 400hp GTO every day for another two. I also drove an IS250AWD for a about seven months. 204hp, 3600lbs curb weight. That car was woefully underpowered.



I feel like you're all telling me that I'm wrong for saying Toyota and Subaru messed up on this car. They didn't. This car is perfect for what they designed it for. It doesn't make an LFA, an M5, an RRS Supercharged, a ZR1, or even an STI any less perfect for what they were designed for, or any less competent as street cars. All I'm saying is that more powerful cars are just as useful and the FR-S/BRZ is not the be all and end all of what you can drive on the street. I don't know why people keep reading that as "the FT86 needs moar power OMG!!!111!! LOLZZ SO SLOW."

Well said!

[Draco-REX]

So how many of you stop on on-ramps?

[Corey]

Originally Posted by LSxJunkie

Thanks for the wall of text. I'm not sure why you got so offended though, seeing as I've ended almost every post with "that's not what this car is about, I don't think it needs any more power."

I'm pretty sure, once again, that you're misreading what I'm writing. Someone ELSE said that any more power (in any car, his example was a 335i) was absolutely useless. I disagreed. I am of the opinion that it makes driving, especially driving in tight traffic at 75mph, which is what generally happens around here, much more convenient. All driving is about power under curve. And torque. And I would know. I drove a 300hp G35 for every day for three years, and a 400hp GTO every day for another two. I also drove an IS250AWD for a about seven months. 204hp, 3600lbs curb weight. That car was woefully underpowered.



I feel like you're all telling me that I'm wrong for saying Toyota and Subaru messed up on this car. They didn't. This car is perfect for what they designed it for. It doesn't make an LFA, an M5, an RRS Supercharged, a ZR1, or even an STI any less perfect for what they were designed for, or any less competent as street cars. All I'm saying is that more powerful cars are just as useful and the FR-S/BRZ is not the be all and end all of what you can drive on the street. I don't know why people keep reading that as "the FT86 needs moar power OMG!!!111!! LOLZZ SO SLOW."

You just happened to be the person I quoted, but the entire post wasn't necessarily aimed at you. A number of people have expressed opinions in this thread that the car needs more power and that is my reply to those people. The BRZ certainly isn't the be all end all of cars, it's simply a good fit for the market it's aimed at. More expensive, more powerful cars have their place as well but the BRZ isn't meant to be among them. It seems we agree on that.

Originally Posted by tachi1247

1% of cars may hit the max hp during daily driving but since were making up percentages I'll say that 80% probably hit max torque at every stoplight save for an s2000 and this car where that figure occurs at 6000rpm.

If that's the case I feel very bad for the 80% of people that are spending way too much money on gas.

[NERO]

I don't know about you guys but both my 06 WRX (Heavily Modified) and my 09 STI (Stage 2) went wide open throttle nearly every time I got in the car. Whether that would be freeway on ramps, merging and needing to get in front of a truck, etc. I like having a little bit of power. For me 350 WHP, is a very usable amount on a car that weights 3300 lbs.