Subaru BRZ
Making the most of its B-road prowess and making up for lost time behind the wheel
Good excuses to take to the B-roads
Entering the twilight phase of BRZ ownership has felt a bit like realising you’ve only got two days of your holiday left and you’re yet to leave the hotel complex. Sure, I’ve had a great time with SU13 ARU, but the car’s fast approaching return date has made me realise that going for a country drive only two or three times a month over the summer was a sacrilegious lack of commitment. I have now righted my wrongs.
Over the past two weeks, almost every journey in the BRZ has been made using the sat-nav’s ‘avoid motorways’ setting (and not only because it’s so difficult to find the necessary infotainment menu to turn the setting off). Instead, I have sought out every apex, camber and potted country route within reach to answer the question hanging over our World Rally Blue Subaru since it arrived on the Autocar fleet: is this the best affordable driver’s car on sale today?
The final venue for the BRZ to flaunt its worth was the B660, a winding asphalt path that serves as a classic example of the British B-road breed. With its varying elevations, stunning scenery and well-sighted, f lowing and technical corners, it’s Bedfordshire’s answer to the Nürburgring.
It’s a mark of the BRZ’S flexibility that the drive from south London to Bedfordshire was a relaxing one, but as soon as the car’s Michelin Primacy HPS rolled onto the B660’s dewcovered surface, it took on the form of a completely different animal. Mostly this was because of the atmospheric flat-four engine, which, if left to work between 1500rpm and 3000rpm, can feel tight and lacking in grunt, while sounding pretty gruff too. But when asked to spin towards its 7000rpm redline, it feels eager and energetic – a trait that has only increased as the miles have rolled on.
If there’s a complaint here, it’s that the engine needs to be worked hard to offer its best performance, but I’m in two minds as to whether that’s really a bad thing. If the alternative is to have a boosty turbocharged engine that has more torque low down but is less explosive at the top end, I’m not sure I’d take it. Perhaps a supercharger kit would offer the best of both worlds; if this was my own car, I’d certainly be tempted by the improvements offered by the supercharger kit that tuning specialists Litchfield sells for £4422.
The BRZ took to the B660, which was partially covered in a blanket of fog on this particular Sunday morning, with composure and confidence. On greasy surfaces like this, you need a chassis beneath you that is both communicative and reactive, and the BRZ’S offers both of these by the bucketload. It meant that I could take the well-sighted bends of the route with enough enthusiasm to feel the suspension load up and get the tail moving a degree or two off line on corner exits.
While some similarly priced hot hatchbacks, with their sticky rubber and harshly sprung suspension, can rebound off cambers and come unstuck without warning, the BRZ caresses the road surface and provides you with multiple options as to how you navigate each stretch of road. If it were completely dry, I don’t doubt the experience would be wanting for more low-down torque, but on a damp British autumn morning, there was little, if any, need for improvement.
Later that day, I ventured west to Silverstone to catch the afternoon races of the British Touring Car Championship round there. Driving into the circuit boundaries, the BRZ turned heads and felt right at home among the parked-up racing machines in the paddock – no doubt helped by Subaru’s presence in the series itself. With this in mind, my answer to that earlier question is this: not only does the BRZ offer the ultimate affordable driver’s experience, but it also does a bloody good job of looking the part.