It really had been a sad few years for new sports car buyers, especially since 2008. There were good sports compacts out there (Mazdaspeed 3, Golf GTI, Civic Si), but all were front-drive with rather pedestrian roots. There were also quite a few proper rear-drive sports cars, but unless you wanted to spend Nissan Z or even Porsche Boxster money, the only choice was the ubiquitous Mazda Miata. The Honda S2000 and Pontiac Solstice/Saturn Sky also disappeared in 2009, and they were all less practical soft tops, anyway. There appeared to be a small but clear void in the performance car market, and it’s one that a joint venture between Toyota and Subaru sought to fill. From the first whispers of a rear-drive coupe from these two auto giants, enthusiasm was high and expectations were perhaps even higher, but the Subaru/Scion introduced in 2012 has proven popular with both companies reporting strong sales and has shown that the small but clear void in the market was very real indeed. It seems that people really do want a cheap and practical but rear-drive and sporty daily driver. Recently, we had a chance to test the Subaru version of the Toyota 86 platform, better known as the Subaru BRZ, to see just how good this thing really is.
Starting off with appearance, the little coupe really gets it right. There’s some fairly clear borrowing from the classic lines of cars like the Toyota 2000GT, but the BRZ also has the super wide, frowning grille that’s common on higher end performance cars these days. It’s low at just 50.6 inches (about 7 inches shorter than a Golf GTI), and looks even better than its Scion sibling with a darker finish to its 17-inch alloy wheels and a hexagonal rather than trapezoidal shape that wide grille. Its proportions are small and they look small, but there’s a sort of classic elegance that you won’t find on a hot hatchback. And though the BRZ certainly lacks the cargo room of a hatchback, the rear seats fold down far enough to fit four wheels, a helmet and a tool kit.
