2013 SUBARU BRZ
Boxer engine pushes zippy coupe through the twists and over the hills
HOOD RIVER, Ore. — As most Porsche and Subaru drivers know, the boxer engine got its name by the movement of its pistons. Unlike every engine you, I or our ancestors ever tore apart, the cylinders that house the pistons in a boxer engine — be they four or six — do not form the familiar V.
Rather, boxer pistons move much like the gloves of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, each man with his back to the other throwing continuous jabs to the ropes. Each stroke of the combustion cycle is like Ali throwing punches on one side, Frazier on the other, except with infinitely more consistency and intensity if not equal finesse.
The boxer architecture is square, able to lower the mass of the engine, not just improving handling by moving weight lower but also resulting in an uncanny smoothness due to the cancelling out of opposing forces. First patented by Karl Benz, the boxer engine is only one of four that have a natural dynamic balance, the other being the straight-six favoured by BMW, the V12 and the wankel.
Subaru and Porsche, the only automakers to routinely use boxer engines, have long enjoyed the beauty of the flat-four and flat-six. It is also why Subaru’s new BRZ rearwheel-drive sports car beats with a specially developed 2.0-litre boxer engine, purposely engineered for the BRZ (Boxer, Rear-wheel-drive Zenith) and Toyota’s Scion FR-S. The engine may produce only 200 horsepower, or 100 hp per litre, but its delivery is able to manipulate the 150 pound-feet of torque to make the car feel as if there’s a turbo lurking beneath that long aluminum hood.
Driving the BRZ through the twisting canyon roads of Oregon, it became clear that this boxer engine is a sweetheart. While able to redline at 7,450 rpm, the power arrives much earlier, starting at around 3,500 rpm. Coupled with the car’s light weight of 1,255 kilograms (44 kg less than a Civic Si), the 200 hp easily motivates the BRZ up hills and through sweeping bends. It’s only when passing at high speed that a little more power would be welcomed.
Regardless, the true delight of this car is its handling, so pure is its response. The BRZ’S steering, through a fat, 36.6-centimetre wheel turning with a 13:1 ratio, feels utterly connected to the road and to the car.
Even though the vehicle has an ideal weight balance of 53-47 biased to the front, the BRZ was more likely to oversteer as it exited a corner. The 215/45R17 Michelin Primacy tires that all BRZ models wear over 17-inch alloy rims tended to hold the car better than expected for a rearwheel-drive vehicle. The car’s beautifully arched front fenders, visible from the driver’s seat, made pointing the car wherever I wanted it to go as easy as sending a Labrador after a Frisbee.
In other words, it’s an honest-togoodness sports coupe.
That, of course, did not come by luck. In the BRZ, the engine sits lower (by 120 millimetres) and further back in the engine bay than the Impreza. The crankshaft was lowered, too. The car’s centre of gravity is 460 mm from the ground, lower than a Porsche Cayman’s. The battery was moved back near the firewall, just one of the measures taken to make the BRZ one of the best-handling cars one can buy for $27,295.
That price is for a BRZ equipped with a 6-speed manual transmission. An automatic is also available. While the 6-speed manual and its short-throw shift lever feels almost like the manual in a Nissan 370Z but with an easier clutch, the 6-speed automatic comes with a Sport mode for sharper shift points, along with a manual mode controlled by paddle shifters that will blip the throttle on downshifts to rev match the engine with the lower gear. With the 6-speed automatic, the base car rises to $28,495.
The BRZ’S agreeable price doesn’t mean Subaru cheaped out on the interior either.
The cockpit is dressed in decent soft-touch materials and goodlooking gauges, aluminum pedals and a proper centre-mounted tachometer inset with a digital speedometer, much like the way Porsche does it. The sport seats in cars with the Sport-tech package wear leather, Alcantara inserts and coloured stitching; just don’t expect two adults to fit comfortably in the rear.