2022 Subaru BRZ review (inc. 0-100): Is it different enough from the old one?

CarExpert

One of the reasons I hated the Toyota 86 when it first launched was because I drove an automatic. It was soul destroyingly slow and ran on Prius tyres. BUT, when I drove the manual, it ALL started to make sense again. So I was naturally excited to drive the 2022 Subaru BRZ with the bigger engine and of course, the manual transmission. Is it any good? Paul Maric finds out!  Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE  More Subaru content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/subaru More Subaru BRZ content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/subaru/brz  Skip Ahead: Intro: 00:00 Exterior 01:08 Interior 03:43 Infotainment 05:19 Safety Tech 06:52 Practicality 07:53 On Road 11:47 0-100 km/h 16:02 Verdict 17:17  We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.  Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.  Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1  You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.  Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!  Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!  CarExpert: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au  Paul Maric: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric  #subaru #brz #review

Transcript

00:00 G'day, I'm Paul, I've been waiting a while to drive this, it is the Subaru BRZ.

00:04 It of course shares a platform with the Toyota 86 or 86 depending on which part of the world

00:09 you're from. This is an interesting car because in a world where we're moving to EV and you know

00:15 everything's got an auto or a CVT of some description, this is a rear-wheel drive manual

00:21 sports car and I think this is very rare especially today. So this competes with things like the

00:26 Toyota 86 because it kind of shares the platform with it, the Mazda MX-5 and it doesn't really have

00:31 any other competitors outside of that because the rest are kind of just front-wheel drive hot hatches

00:35 so it is kind of in a world of its own. In Australia this top spec here, the S variant, is priced at a

00:41 little over $40,000 for the six-speed manual that we have here but if that's too expensive the entire

00:46 range kicks off at a little under $39,000 so the S just gives you a couple of extra sort of bells

00:50 and whistles. Today we're going to do a detailed review of this car so if you do want to skip ahead

00:54 to other parts of the review you can use the time codes on the screen or if you're on YouTube scroll

00:58 down we have some chapters down there for you and if you haven't done so already subscribe to our

01:02 channel, press the bell icon so you can find out every single time I get attacked by flies.

01:07 Let's talk exterior design. So you've got seven external colours to pick from and they are all

01:12 free of charge. What do you reckon about this design? I think it is just the perfect evolution

01:18 from the old car so this doesn't sit on a brand new platform, it's kind of just a modified version

01:23 of the existing platform so beneath the skin it's fairly similar. In terms of the dimensions it has

01:28 changed a little bit so it's 25mm longer than the outgoing model, sits 15mm lower and the wheelbase

01:33 is 5mm longer as well so a couple of little tweaks there but outside of that it's mainly the same.

01:38 Over here you've got a set of LED headlights with the washers built into there, down here you've got

01:43 cooling for that little 2.4 litre engine and of course Subaru badge. This is the only non-all-wheel

01:48 drive Subaru on sale, the rest of Subaru's models are all-wheel drive so because of that shared

01:53 platform they've gone down the path of just adopting whatever Toyota has come up with with

01:57 super resented. Around the side here we have a set of 18-inch alloy wheels, love that design,

02:04 so pretty basic and straightforward, it's got like a graphite finish to it and I think it just stands

02:09 out really nicely especially here with the blue colour. Now a lot of you jumped up and down when

02:13 I said Michelins were no good in the wet. What I meant to say was Michelins are no good in the wet

02:18 until they're warm and it's the same story here. This morning it was raining and there was just

02:22 no traction at all, second they got a little warmer it was far better so this runs on a set

02:26 of Michelin Pilot Sport 4 tyres. Michelins are my pick of the performance tyre bunch because they

02:30 really do offer everything from entry-level sports tyre right through to proper sort of R-compound

02:36 tyres so yeah, big fan of those. Now around the back here you have a set of air vents that come

02:41 in through the back of that wheel. Up the top here you've got a body coloured top to the wing

02:44 mirror, there is no indicator built into there, it sits right up the front of the car there and

02:48 that lights up when you pop the indicator on. It's pretty short, like look at me I'm 185-ish

02:53 centimetres tall and you can see where the car sits so when you do get inside this make sure

02:58 you don't have back problems because it is quite low to the ground. So around the back I quite like

03:02 this design as well so it's just so beautifully proportioned, it sticks out nicely at the rear

03:06 there. Toyota and Subaru really have just gone to a lot of effort to give this a really sporty

03:10 demeanour out on the road. You've got a set of twin exhaust pipes down the bottom here and because

03:14 it was raining this morning the car is a little bit dirty but behind there you can see BRZ or BRZ

03:19 depending on where you're from, another Subaru logo and then Subaru lettering. This button here

03:23 opens the boot so with one push of that it cracks open and then that's where your camera is located

03:28 with a brake light built into there and a shark fin aerial at the top. Now let me know what you

03:33 think about the design, do you think this styling change for the BRZ or BRZ at the 86 is good or do

03:39 you think they could have done a little bit more? Really keen for your feedback down there.

03:43 So we're inside the BRZ, let's start off with the key. So you've got lock, unlock, boot, Subaru

03:50 logo is your unlock button and then it's blank on the back. This looks like every other Subaru key

03:54 but it is a proximity sensing key so you leave that in your pocket, grab the door handle and

03:59 then once you're inside you have a push button start here. So on the design front, look this car

04:04 was never really about setting a new standard in luxury sports cars, it really was all about just

04:11 keeping it simple and that is exactly what they've done here and that is also why pretty much every

04:16 surface is hard and scratchy and I think that if you're going to be using this as a track car or

04:21 even as a daily you probably don't care all that much. They have updated the infotainment system

04:26 so it has a Subaru infotainment system that works quite well and I'll get to that in a second but

04:31 the rest of this is all sort of pretty straightforward. What I am excited to play

04:34 with while we go for a drive are the gauge cluster ahead of the driver here. You can configure a few

04:40 little different things there so we'll have a play with that later on. Now what about your touch

04:43 points? So that center section which opens up is quite soft and then on the door it's quite soft

04:47 as well. How soft are those points? Well we've got our durometer, we've tested the main surfaces in

04:52 this cabin. If you want to see how this car compares to others that we've tested before,

04:56 have a look at the link in the description. Build quality, so let's give this a little shake.

05:00 It all actually feels really nice and solid. Hey tell me, if you owned the previous version of the

05:06 BRZ or the 86, what has build quality been like? Has it been good to live with? Let me know down

05:11 there. And finally, door test. That sounds pretty good. Okay let's talk infotainment. One of the

05:20 things that I really didn't like about the old 86 and the BRZ was the infotainment system. It was

05:25 like an ancient Toyota unit. This finally has the same infotainment system you'll find on a new

05:31 Subaru today. So you're getting an eight inch infotainment screen, so it's a color touch screen

05:35 and then you have shortcut buttons on either side. In terms of your navigation, there is satellite

05:41 navigation built into the actual head unit itself, or alternatively you can use smartphone mirroring

05:46 in the form of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Both of those are wired, so you can see Apple

05:51 CarPlay there. Full screen integration, nice and quick as well. And this is what Android Auto looks

05:56 like. So again, full screen integration and pretty decent setup. Slightly laggy as you scroll up and

06:03 down there, but for the most part that looks good. On the radio front, you have AM, FM and DAB plus

06:10 digital radio and that's all plumbed through a six speaker sound system. Sound system is okay,

06:15 it's not going to set the world on fire, so you might have to get an aftermarket one if you

06:18 do love your music. Now let's talk about the screen ahead of the driver. So I know the old

06:23 BRZ had a screen there ahead of the driver, but I think I like the look of this one a little bit

06:27 better. So you've got all your power and torque stuff and I'll go over that when we go driving,

06:31 but included in that screen on the left hand side are things like your trip computer and then other

06:36 settings that you can play with as well. And then on the right hand side, you have your engine

06:39 temperature, fuel, outside temperature. So they've kept it pretty simple, but there are a lot of

06:44 settings in there you can configure if you are doing track days and that kind of thing. So I do

06:48 like that they have given the driver a lot of opportunity to set it up the way they like it.

06:52 Now what about your safety technology? It's a brand new car in 2022. Unfortunately, they have

06:59 literally stripped this bearer of safety technology and I just can't understand why. So the automatic

07:04 comes with all the stuff you'd expect, but the manual on the other hand really doesn't. All it

07:08 includes is blind spot monitoring built into the wing mirror, rear cross traffic alert and a lane

07:13 change assistant. Outside of that, there is nothing else here. So you don't get any autonomous

07:18 emergency braking or any of the basic safety stuff that you get on virtually every other car today.

07:23 And I think it is to do with the manual transmission, but the odd thing is you can

07:26 get plenty of other cars that have manuals with all of that technology. So pretty disappointing

07:31 that Subaru has not included that here as part of the BRZ. The disappointment kind of also continues

07:36 to parking where here for Australia, we don't get any front or rear parking sensors. All you get is

07:41 a reverse view camera and there it is. Their quality is not too bad actually. And then you

07:46 have guidelines that move with the steering wheel too, but yeah, it would be nice to have parking

07:51 sensors and basic safety technology. Moving on to practicality and we'll start off with your

07:55 connectivity options. So they're all in here. So let me just ditch that for a sec. You've got

08:01 one auxiliary outlet for people who still have auxiliary devices, two USB-A ports. And you might

08:06 be asking yourself, where is the 12 volt? Well, the 12 volt is located here in the glove box. It's

08:11 all the way up there. So there is one, but it is kind of tucked away. Now, what about storing your

08:16 phone? Well, there is no wireless phone charging, but it can live over here in the cup holder pretty

08:20 easily. And then on the cup holder, it does not fit my little coffee. And that means the lid's

08:26 likely to come off. The other problem as well is while you're driving, if you want to get your

08:29 drink, you're going to go all the way back here to grab it. And it is really just a silly position

08:34 to have it, but it kind of makes sense because you have a manual handbrake here instead of the

08:38 electronic type. So it eats into all of your space. Anyway, in terms of the rest of our bottles,

08:44 so that fits in there normally, but no teeth. So it does move around a little bit. And then you have

08:48 bottle storage here inside the door. I am curious to see if our big bottle fits in there because

08:52 that is a giant cavity. Look at that. It does. That is pretty cool. So that's a very clever use

08:57 of that space. Instead of having this up the top here, they've kind of lowered it down so you can

09:01 get the bottle in without any dramas at all. And then you also have a glove box as well,

09:05 reasonably sized. And like I mentioned, that's where you're going to find your 12 volt outlet.

09:08 Now, what about your comfort functions? Well, you have dual zone automatic climate control,

09:13 bumping yourself up to the S grade brings with it heated seats. You operate here. I do like these

09:19 seats. They have a high back to them that really hugs you in nicely. The S-Pack brings the Alcantara

09:24 sort of suede finish here and also a top the gauge cluster. Love the red stitching straight through

09:29 the center there as well. They are a really good seat. The other big bonus as well is that you can

09:33 remove the headrest so you can have a helmet in the car without constantly whacking your head there.

09:38 You can turn it around as well if you want to, and that will support the helmet without

09:43 pushing your head forward. Steering wheel offers just tilt and reach adjustment. It's all manual.

09:49 And then the seat controls are all entirely manual for both the driver and front passenger as well.

09:54 And our reach test, well, all of this stuff is very easy to reach while you're driving.

09:58 Now let's talk about the second row. I'm going to climb in here. Now,

10:03 actually you can hear all those noises, my knees creaking and stuff. Now this is made for petite

10:09 people and I'm not petite. I do like petite fours, but I'm not petite. So really realistically,

10:15 this is going to be a very occasional use second row. Even with my driver's seat pretty much all

10:22 the way forward, I wouldn't be able to drive in that position. I still can't fit back here.

10:25 But you do get ISOFIX points and that means you can stick a child seat in here if you need to.

10:31 And look, to be honest, Igor will be in here when we're doing our driving. So he can fit in here

10:37 uncomfortably, but he still can. And I think that means that, you know, if you do need to use it,

10:40 you can if you want to. Obviously two seats, nothing here in the second row, except the

10:45 driveline that runs down the centre of the car. Now let's talk about cargo space. So obviously

10:49 this is not an SUV, so you're not going to have a great deal of it. You have a little over 200

10:53 litres of cargo space there. And that's partly thanks to this. It's a full-size spare tyre.

10:59 And look, I'm not actually that concerned about the boot space. The fact that you actually get

11:03 a full-size spare on an alloy wheel is pretty cool. I think if you did fit a space saver,

11:07 you could then have a flat floor if you wanted to. But you do have little bits of storage off

11:12 to the side for your tools and stuff like that. Yes, it is going to be hard to fit stuff into

11:16 there as I'll demonstrate right now. And outside of that as well, you don't really have any other

11:20 sort of creature comforts in there. So laptop bag fits in. And then our suitcase. This is around the

11:26 size of a carry-on bag for the plane. So you can see there it just sort of fits in and that will

11:31 be able to close without any dramas at all. Now, if you do need a little bit more space,

11:36 you can actually drop the second row. So it means you obviously can't have any passengers in there.

11:40 Not that you can really fit any passengers anyway, but it gives you a little bit more

11:44 load space to put your other spare tyres in. So we've hit the road in the BRZ.

11:53 Let's start off with the engine. So it has been increased in terms of its size. So it's gone from

11:57 a 2.0-litre to a 2.4-litre and now it produces 170 kilowatts of power and 249 newton metres of

12:04 torque. So that's up 18 kilowatts and 39 newton metres of torque over the previous generation

12:09 engine. And that's a good thing because the previous one was, it was good, but it just

12:13 needed a little bit more as the rev band went around. It was really fun to drive above, you

12:18 know, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 rpm, but it felt like it ran out of steam. So with the 2.4, you've got a

12:24 little bit more capacity to work with and a lot of people modify their cars anyway. So it was kind

12:28 of irrelevant how much it made out of the box. This just gives you a stronger set of internals

12:32 to work with before you go do your modifications. So what does all that feel like behind the wheel?

12:37 Well, given it hasn't changed a great deal over the last one in terms of the chassis,

12:40 it actually feels really good. So I love the sonorous note these have.

12:44 You can hear a little bit of that getting plumbed into the cabin through the speakers, but

12:52 for the most part, it's actually quite a fun sounding engine and it's a lot more eager now.

12:56 So if we drop back to third here at that 4,000 rpm mark and punch it,

13:00 it feels ready to move. It's really sort of wanting to get up and move a whole lot faster. So

13:06 really impressed with that. Now what's the gearbox like? So we don't really talk about

13:10 gearboxes all that much in terms of the way that they feel, but this is so nice. It's super notchy.

13:15 There's no rev matching or anything else like that. You're doing it all yourself

13:19 and it just feels really mechanical and just fun to drive with. Every input you make here has a

13:24 direct correlation to what's going on under the bonnet. So love the way that feels and I love how

13:29 direct it all is. So Subaru claims a combined fuel economy of 9.5 litres per 100 Ks. Let's have a

13:35 look at what we're doing here. 10.6. It's pretty awesome given we had some fun in the car this

13:41 morning and 10.6 litres per 100 Ks is such a nice figure for a car that you can have fun in,

13:47 flog the absolute bejesus out of and then not have to cry every single time you fill it up at the

13:52 petrol station. Now speaking of which down here with that trip computer is you've actually got

13:56 some cool little applications. So you've got a torque and power band as it sort of increases

14:01 there you can see that moving. You've got a little G-bubble. You've got a lap timer as well. So it's

14:06 a pretty cool setup that you have to play with there as standard. Now what's it like in terms

14:10 of the ride? So no adaptive dampers or anything like that. We're going to crank this up just a

14:15 little bit to highway speeds as we approach our sine waves here. We'll see how it copes with this.

14:21 It's actually really good over those sine waves so that's great news there in terms of the

14:24 suspension setup. You will have noticed I'm having to yell at you now even at 100 Ks an hour here it

14:29 is super noisy at highway speeds. You can barely hear yourself think over that tyre roar. There

14:35 is a little bit of wind noise coming into the cabin as well. Again not the end of the world

14:38 when you look at this as an application. It is a sports car in that sense so I don't think it's

14:43 going to be changing anyone's mind in terms of a purchase. So let's put it into sport mode. Well

14:48 it is in sport mode. The only thing you can do here is put it into track stability mode and we'll

14:53 do that. Dial up the speed a little bit here. Drop back to second for our corner. The brakes feel

14:58 really nice and confident. Plough it through here. That feels great. Quick gear shifts there as well.

15:11 Wow it really just hangs on doesn't it? That is really good.

15:14 It is moving. I'm really shocked by this. Despite being not all that powerful it is honking along

15:26 nicely. One of the big differences here compared to the old one is the available grip and traction

15:33 that you have. The old one really was just constantly battling for traction before you

15:37 got rid of those stock tyres. This on the other hand is just really just ploughing on the speed

15:44 and through these fast sweepers it has a degree of body roll but it doesn't unsettle the car even

15:50 as you hit a bump mid-corner. So yeah really impressed with this and tell you what I think

15:56 if you strapped a turbo or a supercharger to this this would be just another league of fun.

16:01 Now Subaru doesn't have, well I can't find an official 0-100 time so we're just going to pop

16:07 it up against our stopwatch we'll see how it goes. So I've switched stability control off here just

16:11 to give us a little bit more wheel slip off the line and we will see how it goes.

16:17 Now what you won't have seen on the camera there because we only used one shot of that,

16:32 I couldn't see the rev gauge because our GoPro's in the way here but

16:36 Igor who's crammed into the back there made a really good point. I can use the power band there

16:40 to give us a better idea of when to shift because once you reach the end of the power band you're

16:44 not really sort of making any more progress. So that's what we did on that last one and it felt

16:48 the best way to do it. So if you have bought a BRZ don't use your tacho, use the power band instead.

16:54 Now after we finished driving I was playing around with this screen here and you can actually

16:58 set your own rev indicator. So if you go into the rev menu you can adjust when the shift indicator

17:05 comes up and you can even then associate a buzzer with it as well. So yeah that's actually a really

17:10 cool setup and it makes driving this harder even easier because you can dictate exactly when you

17:14 should be shifting gears even if you can't see the speedo. So the new Subaru BRZ, look I'm a guy that

17:19 loves a bit of power, a big old V8 or a fast EV or something like that but I tell you what I've had

17:25 so much fun in that today. It's a big improvement over the old one in terms of power and torque

17:29 delivery. It feels much punchier in the mid-range and it still retains all of those fun-to-drive

17:34 characteristics except now it has actual tires which is very handy. It is still really fun to

17:39 drive and then when it gets wet it can just be this little sort of fun little drifting machine

17:43 as well. So I think if you do want a sporty car that isn't a front-wheel drive car it just doesn't

17:49 really put a foot wrong at all. I would get the manual, you're gonna have to cop the fact that it

17:52 doesn't have all of that safety technology, yes which is disappointing, but the manual is the way

17:56 to go. The auto is just a little bit pedestrian, you may as well just not bother with it. Now let

18:01 me know what you reckon about this. Have you bought one? What's it been like so far and is

18:04 the ownership experience any good? I'm very keen to hear from you guys all the time. If you did

18:09 enjoy this video please make sure you share it with your mates, hit the like button and if you

18:12 haven't done so subscribe to our channel. But until next time, take it easy.

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