The poor Subaru BRZ! It’s one of the best dedicated sports cars of our time, and despite a ton of initial hype, it’s had a hard time selling beyond a small but dedicated fanbase. It can’t shake the widespread sentiment that it needs more power.
Now even the president and COO Subaru of America, Tom Doll, says the car could use more juice. On Autoline TV, as recounted by Autoguide, Doll weighed in on the talented but sales-challenged BRZ:
“There’s a place for the BRZ in our product lineup,” said Doll. “We may have to do some things to it to enhance the driving performance a little more; take it up a little bit. Because I think that’s one of the learnings we’ve seen out of that vehicle, if it had a little bit more performance to it, it could really take up the sales level even more.” Doll admits that the future of the BRZ and a second generation of the car depends on Subaru’s relationship with Toyota.
I’ve written at excess length about my love for the BRZ just as it is, but as I said there, the American performance car game tends to be driven by raw power and 0 to 60 times over corner-carving and intangible things like feel. It’s unlikely to be a mainstream hit like the new 2015 Ford Mustang is.
And even Subaru’s involvement with the BRZ seems kind of up in the air — the rumor is Toyota could go with Mazda and its new Miata platform for their next-gen sports car, leaving the folks from Fuji Heavy in the lurch. Doll seems to allude to that fact here.
Who knows what will happen to the BRZ? In the meantime, Subaru of America, if you guys took it upon yourselves to give it more power — say, putting a WRX STI engine under its hood — I don’t think anyone would hate you for it. Quite the opposite.
Shoving a more powerful engine into a smaller car is the American way!
Contact the author at patrick@jalopnik.com.