As rare and remarkable for its rarity in today’s automotive landscape of weight, detachment, and relentless SUVs, the new Subaru BRZ is an exceptionally easy car to explain. Truth be told, you, dear reader, could write this review in your head.
Subaru’s new sports car, virtually identical to Toyota’s co-developed GR86, is a collection of cliches in the most wonderful sense.
Rear-wheel-drive balance with perfect weight distribution, check. Vibrant control surfaces that perfectly balance resistance and assistance, check. Suspension that keeps the car taut but not punishing, check.
Now close your eyes and imagine sitting where I am sat, then let the happiness wash over you. Really, that’s all that needs to be said about what is unequivocally one of the most patently wholesome, honest, and enjoyable cars on sale new today.
Subaru deigns to pass me the keys on one of those glorious evenings, when an afternoon rain shower somehow leaves the sun peeking through expanding gaps in the clouds.
Everything is saturated in a glistening golden glow. Practically fizzing with excitement, I throw open the driver’s door and leap in.
BASIC YET FANTASTIC
The interior is, predictably, a sea of black blocky hollow plastic with a distinctly 1980s vibe. Who cares. Actually, it is even more charming for it. Insolently thumbing its nose at the idea of luxury as a distraction, the BRZ presents a true driver’s cockpit with resolute philosophical purity.
It is all very “my-parents’-Japanese-car” in here, so much that I might quite like to see a double DIN Pioneer head-unit sticking out of the dash.
Instead, we get a smartphone-mirroring capable touchscreen system with simple, blocky graphics. That is all the infotainment anyone needs, really.
I reach down and… what is THAT?! An AUTOMATIC! In a purist’s machine?! Sacre-Bleu! Blasphemy! The Horror!
The 6-speed slushbox does enable the fitment of Subaru’s EyeSight suite of features including such insurance-friendly nannies like automated emergency braking and lane-departure warning. So, I guess there is an upside.
LETTING IT BREATHE
Calming my indignation, I head out onto Leng Kee Road. Immediately I encounter, on the slightly damp surface, a sweeping corner as I accelerate in an arc onto Alexandra Road.
The car remains flat, an impression aided by a straight windscreen-line that acts as spirit-level and frame of reference to the road. The previous generation of the Toyobaru twins were known as a pair of drifter’s dreams, and so I was half-expecting the backside to step out.
It doesn’t actually, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, traction control was on and secondly, there is quite perceptibly a bit more grip here than went before.
Normally, when a generation-on-generation evolution leads to greater security on the road, we sigh in disappointment. This suggests a gain in maturity at the expense of entertainment. Not here, however.
When a car’s fundamentals are so right, the finest nerve endings on your fingertips and the little hair cells in your vestibular system know that it can stick its tail out if so commanded.
The Subaru’s centre of gravity is so clearly next to your hip, and its chassis and steering so delightfully chatty. Even if you have never taken attitude in this car before, your lizard brain can intuit how. It is quite genius, this cornering demeanour.
My oh my it has not even been 500m and here, immediately, is the BRZ we all know and love, except subject to a professional athlete’s personal training regimen.
Subaru’s effusive reps tell me that their baby has been tuned to have less of an oversteer bias than the Toyota 86, and that it has a rear suspension stabiliser bar mounted to the body instead of the subframe.
It also uses more aluminium in the rear suspension’s construction for a relative improvement in unsprung weight. Recalling my drive in the 86 from a while ago, I struggled to really perceive the difference between the twins in on road demeanour, especially without a back-to-back drive on track. Suffice to say both cars are utterly enlivening to the soul.
A BIGGER, BETTER HEART
The end of the corner brings an opportunity to wring out the boxer four. The BRZ’s motor makes meaningful gains in potency and delivery. That odd hollow spot in the rev range of the old motor has been filled in with sinew, accompanied by a uniquely metallic boxer snarl that only gets angrier as you wring it out.
Given that this is the part of the tachometer one occupies most when hustling along at a rapid but not vicious clip, the improvement is salient indeed.
Such an improvement is particularly meaningful in an automatic, where the extra flexibility eliminates occasions where the car is caught out flat-footed. Such are the gains in muscularity that the car is quite happy to buzz along in third through most city traffic, its light body surfing waves of easy torque.
About that gearbox. Philosophical dissonance aside, I must grudgingly admit that I actually quite like it. The steering wheel paddles feel positive and solid, and the programming is clever enough to keep the newly fortified motor on the boil even without engaging the more aggressive “sport” programming.
Pride aside, choosing this transmission option is no great penance.
It is rare that a 4-cylinder is truly characterful rather than merely functional. The engine in the Alpine A110 and Mazda MX-5, for example, are the only merely okay bits in otherwise exceptional packages, but here the motor is very much part of the party.
Speaking of other lightweight fun machines, the 86 carves out its own distinguished dynamic personality. The BRZ is light, but not preternaturally so.
Splitting the difference between the substantial, medium-rare-steak-like texture of a Porsche 718 and the pandan-chiffon cake buoyancy of the Alpine, its control weights and responses come across as forgiving but solid.
Certainly, against the amusingly loose-jointed MX-5, the 86 plays a harder, tauter, concerto.
THE BREEZY VARIANT
The previous BRZ was one of the greats in automotive history. Not because it was fast. Not at all. In fact, being fast was patently not the point. Speed was only ever there to the extent that it was entertaining. Unlike with so many modern sports cars, pure velocity was never an end in itself, and never an altar at which fun and involvement were sacrificed.
As a result, the BRZ wore its lack of blistering outright pace almost as a badge of honour, choosing instead to almost be toy-like. It was a hilarious caricature of the romanticised concept of “rear-drive”.
Like one of those RC cars u see zipping around cul-de-sacs, it was a drift-o-matic laugh machine, enabling the driver to slide safely and controllably even at very low speeds. Skinny tyres helped, both in concept and in practice.
The new car ladles on the capability, yet somehow retains the core ingredients that made the old one an absolute joy to play with. It improves on the old model in every way it should, and takes away from absolutely none it should not.
As a machine, it is incredibly satisfying and remains beautifully educational to interact with.
Subaru BRZ 2.4 (A)
ENGINE 2386cc, 16-valves, flat-4
MAX POWER 231bhp at 7000rpm
MAX TORQUE 250Nm at 3700rpm
POWER TO WEIGHT 186.2bhp per tonne
GEARBOX 6-speed automatic with manual select
0-100KM/H 6.9 seconds
TOP SPEED 216km/h
CONSUMPTION 11.3km/L (combined)
PRICE INCL. COE From $227,800
AGENT Motor Image Enterprises
