Car has all the trappings of a folk hero
Chevy guys will know that if you’re talking classic wagons, you’re talking Nomads. And if you’re talking Nomads, the only one worth a damn is the twodoor variety. Why? Because it’s rare.
The two-door Nomad is a contradiction. It’s the inconvenient version of a vehicle whose main advantage is its convenience.
The BRZ tS kind of inhabits the same space. A hardcore, track-focused, semi-STI version of a car whose main advantages are its norm-core, street-focused, unpretentious nature, it doesn’t really make sense. But it’s cool. And it’s rare. And that might be enough.
What does it all mean?
It’s a BRZ that Subaru’s performance division has taken a look at without actually adding power to.It effectively comes down to a stiffer chassis, stickier tires, and a big honking spoiler over the rear wheels.
What has changed, exactly? The Sachs dampers from the BRZ Limited Performance package are tuned to work with 18-inch wheels; the same package’s Brembo brakes also sneak behind those wheels and cover 12.8-inch discs in the front and 12.4-inch discs behind you; STI springs are 15 per cent stiffer fore, 3 per cent stiffer aft; a flexible strut-tower brace, flexible lower front cross member brace both are added and use ball joints to limit NVH (they do not); and the car wears sticky Michelin Pilot Sports.
All of this means a stiffer ride with an 18-per-cent reduction in roll and 15-per-cent reduction in pitch, so that there’s none of the standard car’s bobbing in hard cornering or brak- ing. It also means less oversteer and better grip.
The consensus among my esteemed peers is that this all amounts to better handling, but less fun.
For a certain type of driver
Any passing attempts to reduce NVH have failed because this is one of the loudest cars I’ve ever driven. It has a nice interior, but it sounds like a race car. When you get in and press the clutch to start it, you can hear the levers moving under you and when you press the ignition button, you’re greeted by a laboured, prolonged wind up. Somehow, this flat four sounds good — meaty and bassy. It takes some time to heat up, skipping the odd beat, making the car twitch excitedly on idle. It’s by no means a race car, but the noises, the thinness, make it feel a bit like one.
When you start moving, you notice immediately how rough every road you drive is. Cracks in the pavement that you might otherwise ignore completely now come into the cabin. But the BRZ tS makes you feel like it wants you to fight back.
Stress machine
Picking a gear takes effort and the cogs are too similar in size to all be used in everyday driving. Driving smoothly requires several throttle blips and driving quickly requires a firm hand.
Loud, effortsome, and constantly encouraging you to fight it, driving the tS quickly didn’t make me smile so much as grit my teeth in focus. But you are rewarded with pace. The stiff chassis and grippy wheels amount to a very neutral car. You can still get the back end to wiggle if you’re really silly with the throttle, but it’s not given to oversteer. What the BRZ tS lacks in straight line speed it makes up for in its ability to pull Gs.
One of the BRZ’s biggest advantages was its ability to deliver outrageous fun at normal speed and at normal prices. It wasn’t a giant-killer, it was a little kid playing pretend. The tS loses that childlike glee. So does it become Don Quixote when it actually dresses up for battle? I’m not so sure.
By making this tS so expensive, by making it look special, and perhaps most importantly by making its appeal less obvious than horsepower, Subaru has made a truly noteworthy piece of esoterica.
The context of the ins and outs
There’s pleasure in the acceptance that comes with seeing a Civic Type R driver covet your car. There’s pleasure in knowing that Subaru went overboard trying to make the BRZ tS handle as well as they possibly could. There’s pleasure in knowing that you could pull out two wrenches and make the car’s back end stickier if you needed to. There’s pride in possessing something limited to a run of just 500 and in knowing that anyone who buys it has to know more than just how to quote horsepower figures.
The verdict
The tS isn’t for everyone. The standard car is probably more fun on the road and I don’t disagree that by making it handle better, Subaru has added a little too much grip to the power-to-grip see-saw. But I don’t think the tS has to be for everyone. Subaru seems to agree. Really, this is for nerds and I don’t think they’ll be disappointed by this car. The tS feels appropriately special.
Making predictions about future classics is always a tricky business, but the BRZ tS has all the trappings of a future classic. It’s limited, it has an advantage over regular counterparts, and it has the kind of pace that will doubtless make it a folk hero at the autocrosses, leading to exaggerated tales about its excellence. The types of exaggerated tales that’ll make it a downhill hero.