It’s not often that the entire Australian motoring media agrees on the merits of a particular vehicle, but such has been the case with the new Subaru BRZ. This exciting and affordable two-door coupe has gained rave reviews from just about everyone who’s driven it, although sadly very few members of the public, and so potential buyers, have had that opportunity and won’t have for some time.
High global demand meant that barely BRZ 200 models made it to Australia. Of these, about 50 were allocated to dealers as demonstrators meaning that demand was always going to heavily outweigh supply and all available cars were sold in just over three hours when they went on sale in July this year.
BRZ is built at Subaru’s Ota plant in Japan as a joint venture with the company’s part-owner, Toyota, and it competes directly against its identical twin, the Toyota 86.
The division of labour between the two companies makes a lot of sense with Toyota looking after the product planning and styling while Subaru in charge of its engineering development and production.
The BRZ breaks new ground for Subaru in that it has rear-wheel drive — all its other Australian models have all-wheel-drive.
The Subaru coupe certainly looks the part with its low-slung styling and short overhangs. The front is dominated by a large, hexagonal grille with sweeping headlights and the rear is tall and square with an additional brake light positioned between twin large tail pipes.
Although there are four seats the rear pair are basically there for emergency use rather than for long-distance travel. The boot is quite small although the rear seatbacks do fold flat for extra storage space. Surprisingly for a car where space is at a premium, the BRZ comes with a full-size spare wheel.
Power comes from an all-new 2.0-litre turbocharged horizontally opposed petrol engine that generates 147 kW of power at 7000rpm and 205Nm of torque at 6600 revs. We’ve always loved the throaty sound of the Subaru ‘boxer’ engine. Both the six-speed manual and six-speed automatic transmissions were specifically developed for the BRZ. Our test car had the manual, a delightful short-throw unit that is fast and smooth and just asks to be used frequently.
With so few cars available Subaru adopted the unusual strategy of selling the BRZ exclusively over the internet and with national driveaway pricing — $37,150 for the manual and $39,730 for the automatic.
We’ve left the bad news until last because, despite ongoing pleading with Subaru’s head office decision makers, the worldwide popularity of the BRZ means that there could be a wait for up to a year before the next shipload arrives in Australia. Fingers crossed that this isn’t the case.
