Originally Posted by
CudaMan
This is true. I forgot about that.
The torque dip can be remedied with a $500 header (maybe even less?) and an off the shelf tune, and it makes a noticeable difference. I'm sure you know that. I think it makes the car much nicer to drive, even though it doesn't add a lot of power. A tune also fixes the punitive stock rev limiter that decelerates rather than holding peak speed.
What kind of fuel economy are you getting? I think they do great for a sports car, especially one that can do the 1/4 mile in easily under 15 seconds. Upper 30s on the highway isn't unheard of.
Billi, I guess suspension geometry can be felt, in a sense. I've never thought about it that way. I just know a bit about the geometry in these cars (and some others) and how that affects grip in various circumstances. If Toyobaru had gone all out on bespoke suspension parts and mounting points on these cars, they could have been extra amazing, but they do pretty well in spite of their cost savings shortcomings. The parts and tuning we've done in STX trim go a long way to making it better, at the cost of some of the comfort and ground clearance Joe Consumer would expect. I personally find moderately stiffly sprung cars with excellent damping curves to often be at least as good in ride quality as regular soft OEM springs with cheap OEM dampers, but I'm probably a bit unique in this respect. I do tend not to drive very much on extremely bad roads. But I digress.
Anyone remember how Toyota specifically (err, Scion...) was marketing the FR-S as the modern generation AE86 at launch? Right down to "it does great drifts if you want!" They did a great job of this, but as I learned later about the suspension parts, particularly at the back, I think this may have been a masterstroke of positive marketing/branding spin on a more mediocre rear suspension design from the Subaru parts bin. The rear suspension comes from Subaru's bread and butter AWD cars, which, like any AWD front-engine car, need help rotating on power. The rear suspension geometry is designed to facilitate this. Put it on a RWD car, add rear LSD, and it'll *really* want to rotate on power rather than put that power to the ground when turning. The way this idea of marketing spin for the FR-S dawned on me was from racing the GT3 GT-R. It had to use stock rear suspension arms and mounting points, yet was converted to RWD instead of the street-car AWD. We struggled a lot to put power down off of corners, even for an FR car in general, even with some of the smartest engineers in North America working to optimize this area within the limitations of FIA homologation.