The New 2022 Subaru BRZ Is Way Better Than the Original

this is the new 2022 subaru brz and it's the second generation of subaru's well-known and much-discussed brz sports car it looks different from the old one as you can see but the big update is power everyone complained that the old brz was slow well the new one has a bigger engine and more power and today i'm going to review it before i get started be sure to check out cars and bids which is my enthusiast car auction website for cool cars from the modern era now with free listings you can list your cool car from the 1980s and up for free and auction it on cars and bids and we've had some great sales recently including this mitsubishi 3000 gt vr4 spyder sold for 40 thousand dollars this acura nsx new model bright orange sold for 131 thousand dollars and this autozam az1 sold for 34 000 setting a record for that car if you're interested in buying or selling a cool car from the modern era check out cars and bids with great selection and daily auctions and now free listings at carsandbids.com so let's talk brz the original brz came out for the 2013 model year and back then it had a twin version from toyota called the scion fr-s and right after they came out the complaints started not enough power too slow nice car handles well but needs more power and i figured you know yeah within a year or two they're going to come out with some sport version with more power and everyone will rejoice but it never happened despite years of complaints there was never a more powerful version of the subaru brz or the scion frs which later changed its name to the toyota 86 it was a baffling decision that i still don't really understand but if you wanted more power from one of those cars you had to tune it yourself until now now finally there's a new brz and a new toyota 86 with a bigger engine and more power gone is the old 200 horsepower 2-liter boxer 4-cylinder in these cars it's replaced by a 2.4 liter boxer 4 with about 230 horsepower it's not a huge upgrade but it helps and you don't want too much power in these cars that's not really the point of them they're more about like finesse and a small size and a lightweight balanced chassis and now it's time to review the new brz which starts around 29 000 with shipping first i'll take you on a tour of this car and show you all of its interesting quirks and features then i'll get it out on the road and drive it and then i'll give it a doug score all right i'm gonna start the quirks and features the new brz with getting in and that means starting with the key which has a cool little quirk instead of having the logo on one side and then all the buttons on the other the subaru logo is the unlock button you press the subaru logo to unlock the doors and thus begin your subaru experience which seems rather fitting i kind of like that little touch now when you climb inside the first thing you notice in here if you're familiar at all with the old brz is it looks pretty similar in this interior some stuff is just straight up carried over i think the steering wheel is exactly the same these little circle climate controls in the center of that layout is exactly identical the old school real parking brake right in the center mounted in the same spot probably the same part and frankly just the overall layout is very similar to the outgoing brz there are no giant leaps forward in this interior it's really similar to the old one and if you've spent any time in the outgoing brz you will certainly feel right at home in here with that said there are two major changes in this interior i would say and both are screen related one is the gauge cluster which is now no longer fixed analog gauges but instead you have a screen as you can see here you have the screen split up into three different parts over on the right you have a simple display that shows a few basic items like outside temperature time engine temperature and fuel level those are pretty standard now over on the left side of the screen you have a similar display although this one is configurable you move this little switch on the steering wheel you can scroll through a few different displays over on the left part of the screen you can see your tire pressures here you have two different trip odometers and you have a couple of gauges not a lot of information in these screens but a little bit more than you would get in fixed gauges since it is a screen that's configurable now in the center you have obviously the main portion of your gauge cluster screen you have your speedometer digitally printed in the very middle and then around that you have your tachometer in a traditional circular fashion and this is also fixed in place except if you put the car into track mode go into track mode and you can see this gauge changes and now you have almost like an aviation style gauge showing your rpms it like goes upwards and it looks a little cooler and your speedometer has been minimized because the theory is if you're on the racetrack your speed is nowhere near as important as your engine speed you'll be looking at that more commonly now unfortunately going into track mode also turns off traction control in this car and i say unfortunately because it would be cool to get this gauge cluster display without having to disable traction control it's a cool display to look at and you might want to just see that while you're driving around but unfortunately they've paired that with track mode which turns off your traction control so if you want that display you gotta turn off traction control now like i said there are two big screen related changes the interior the new brz and the other one is the center screen the infotainment screen which is larger than the one in the prior model and frankly it is very simple very easy to use very intuitive you swipe your hand it moves it does what you want you can see all of the different little icons you can choose from and it has android auto and apple carplay like basically every vehicle does now also like an old school subaru it has birthday and anniversary reminders you can plug in a birthday or an anniversary that you'll want to remember and then the car will remind you of those things when you start it up subaru's had this for a long time other brands don't have it but subarus do and the brz does as well programmable in this infotainment screen also worth noting with this screen the types of people who buy these cars tend to prefer a more analog experience with their manual transmission rear-wheel drive simple sports car and this screen helps to deliver that too there are some traditional fixed buttons you can see a few of the radio controls along the sides are fixed in place so you don't have to go into the screen to adjust your volume or change the radio track or that kind of thing you also have fixed buttons over on the left to go directly to your home screen or to your phone or to your apps which helps make navigation with this screen a little bit easier you also have fully fixed controls for your climate controls you can see them right below the screen no climate controls are integrated into the screen meaning you have traditional buttons and dials and switches for climate control so again you don't have to go into the screen to adjust that stuff and like i said this is all pretty similar to the old brz these circular climate control dials you can see on the top on the bottom you have these curiously shaped buttons they are rather strange and certainly quite distinctive for this car you tap those to adjust various different climate control items as well but those are your fixed climate controls by the way next up speaking of notable controls in this car one is to the left of the gauge cluster you have the trip reset button which is huge most cars it's like a little stick coming out of the gauge cluster you just tap it here it's a full button with trip reset printed on it it seems unnecessarily big and kind of strange also notable in the control and button area in the center console you have three buttons in here on the left you have traction control off on the right you have the button to go into track mode which i discussed before you hold that button down and it turns off your traction control puts you in track mode and adjusts that gauge in the gauge cluster to look more tracky now in the center of these three buttons you have a blank which is kind of odd why not just make two buttons i'm not really sure but you do have that blank there now just below these traction trolls in the center console you have your heated seats left and right you have two stages high and low as you can see and in this area you also have your old school parking brake like i mentioned so you can still pull it up and do a drift if you want to no electronic parking brake in the brz just yet and in this vicinity of course you also have the gear lever six-speed manual transmission this car subaru says 85 of prior generation brz's were ordered with the manual transmission and they expect that to continue with this new generation of course an automatic will still be available but if you're really into driving this car like it was intended a manual is probably the way to go now missing from the center console there's no wireless charging pad in here this card doesn't have it but you do have your center console storage area back here you push this button it pops open and you can see various usb slots so you can charge your device there's also an aux port in here which is kind of old school but it has it in case that's your chosen method of playing music from your device also in this center console you have cupholders this is where your couplers are hidden in your center console storage area so you kind of have to choose if you want to use this for storage or for cup holders although it is worth noting you have extra cup holders on your door panels you can see them here you can stick some cups in here but this is your only door panel storage there's no other door panel storage slot so again you'll have to choose if you want to use this for like putting your wallet or whatever while you're driving or if you want to actually use it for cups kind of a small interior and so there are some storage compromises in here now with that said everything else in this interior is fairly straightforward although i do notice two rather annoying annoyances one is the turn signals this car has one of these old-school turn signal designs where you put on the signal and then the stock returns to the center position and so in order to turn off the signal you're stuck in this kind of loop of pushing it up and then down and not really figuring out how to turn it off it's bad design and i wish it just had a normal regular turn signal stock like basically every other car this is over complicating a function that doesn't need to be over complicated also annoying in this car if you have the doors locked and you pull the handle to get out they don't automatically unlock like they do in every other car instead you have to manually reach up and unlock the door and then you can pull the handle and actually climb out kind of a stupid little oversight a minor one for sure but a little bit of an annoyance why don't they just correct that and the turn signals while they're at it and next up we move on to the back seats in the brz yes this car has back seats the old one did too and the old one they were pretty much unusable and in this one they are still pretty much unusable once the seat is forward then you can climb in if you fit and of course i barely do you can get into these back seats but there's really not all that much space and of course once you're back here it's very difficult to get the seat to latch unless you're an incredibly small rear seat passenger now these rear seats don't have much to offer as you can imagine they look like sport bucket racing seats like you might find in a porsche gt car but that's only because they're so small and sort of sunken in and sitting back here is really not incredibly comfortable you really wouldn't want to put anyone back here for more than a few minutes unless there may be a very small child and even then it's going to be a tight squeeze but at least you have this space back here if you need to use it or if you want to throw some cargo back here of course you can do that too but interestingly the most annoying thing about the rear seats isn't how small they are in fact it doesn't even relate to sitting in them you don't notice that until you get into the trunk so let's open up the trunk to do that there's a hidden little trunk popper button on this black strip that goes across the trunk of the car you press that and the trunk pops open you open it up and can see the trunk is not really all that large it has some space you can put some stuff in it but it's not exactly huge and there's no trunk storage space underneath the floor you lift this up and you can see this is where like your tire changing tools are your fix-a-flat that sort of thing so there's not extra storage space under there but the rear seats do fold down which is a nice touch except you can't fold them down from the trunk instead to fold the rear seats down you have to open up the front door fold the front seat forward pull the front seat forward and then reach all the way into the rear seats to this little latch next to the headrest and lower the seat from there it's quite a cumbersome process just to get the seats down and frankly on a car where most people probably aren't going to be using the back seats all that much they'd probably rather have the storage space it would be nice to have easier access to folding the rear seats down at least from the cargo area but next up we move on to probably this car's most desirable and highly anticipated new feature and that would be the powertrain so the old model had a 2-liter flat 4 that made about 200 horsepower and about 155 pound-feet of torque this one has a 2.4 liter flat 4 that makes about 230 horsepower and about 185 pound-feet of torque those aren't huge increases but they are noticeable especially because this car weighs about the same as its predecessor 2 800 pounds give or take only about 20 pounds more than the previous brz so you have about 15 percent more horsepower about 20 percent more torque but weight is the same and that means a faster car projections are zero to 60 in around six seconds or maybe a little bit less with the manual transmission and that is reasonably quick and it's certainly faster than the old model which is always hailed as being so slow now interestingly this engine this 2.4 liter flat 4 is roughly the same engine that's in the subaru ascent crossover although that one has a turbocharger and about 260 horsepower might be nice to see that turbocharger make its way to the brz but given that they never threw more power on the old models i won't be holding out all that much hope but it would be cool also interesting to note with this engine you can see printed right in the center toyota on the top subaru on the bottom as if to solidify this partnership between these two brands to create this car even though the engine itself seems to be mostly from subaru but while the engine is the big upgrade to this car that everybody's going to be talking about i have to say another big upgrade at least from my perspective is the styling it is a lot bolder it is a lot more aggressive it's a lot sportier than the outgoing model in fact it really transforms it from kind of a like sporty economy car type look to a real like muscular sports car look on the outside when i first saw photos i wasn't sure it was that different from the old model but standing here next to it you can really tell and there are a lot of great touches that give it a more bolder more aggressive more performance car look compared to the outgoing model it really is a big improvement frankly in my opinion on par with the extra power from the engine now on the outside there are a few interesting quirks and features that are notable enough to cover one is these fender vents lexus isf style fender vents very noticeable very bold and they give this car certainly a very distinctive look it's pretty cool also the rear diffuser is worth noting you have two big exhaust pipes back here and some lighting down here you have your reverse lights then also in the center a red light this would be for rear fog lights for the european market probably not used in north america but all this lighting down here the rear diffuser the exhaust it's certainly an aggressive exciting look that's in keeping with the design of the rest of the car one other thing you'll notice if you look closely on the brz in the frs is the roof has sort of a double bubble look to it you can see it's a little higher up on the sides and a little lower in the center that is for headroom this is a relatively small car and to give taller drivers more space they double bubbled the roof and this carries over to the inside you can see it's a little higher over the seats to add even just a few more millimeters of headroom and make the car a little bit more palatable for taller drivers which makes sense now also on the outside one other thing i want to cover is the wheels this brz has 18 inch wheels because it's a limited model the base model has 17-inch wheels and interestingly the design is roughly the same so it's kind of hard to tell apart the base and the limited just from looking at the wheels the difference is in the size and in the tires the limited gets michelin pilot sport 4s tires a very good grippy tire and an upgrade over the base models tires now the limited costs extra of course is about 2500 extra compared to the base model so this one starts around 31 500 compared to around 29 for the base model but it's probably worth it for those larger wheels grip your tires and a few other upgrades that the limited model has like heated seats and some other touches and so those are the quirks and features of the new subaru brz now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the new brz and i got to tell you i've already spent a little bit of time in this car and it is a thrill it really is my chief complaint with the old brz was always the same as everybody's main problem with it which was that it just didn't have enough power and i always thought it was a mistake that they didn't give it more power and i truly always thought it was kind of stupid honestly and now here we are with an extra 30 horsepower it's not a huge number but it's something so what's it like to drive the new brz well the first thing you notice is it really is quicker now i don't want to sit here and say that it's fast it doesn't feel like a very fast car like it kicks you in the face and throws you back in your seat it's not like that but it does feel quicker it feels more spry it feels more eager and that is especially noticeable like when you're passing when you're in the middle of the rev range frankly when you're on your favorite you know back road windy road and you just go down one gear uh to accelerate more that's where you feel it and that's where this car really comes alive compared to the old one and that's a big deal because that was really lacking in the old model and the culprit there the reason it feels better in that part of the curve is torque um the 30 more horsepower is the big story with this car but bumping torque by about 30 pound feet is a really big story because it was so much lower so that's actually a higher percentage gain for torque and it makes the car feel a lot faster now i gotta say it's not just the extra power that makes this car feel so good the handling is just great now this has always been a hallmark of this car it's something they got right from the very first model but it steers and handles fantastically incredibly predictable incredibly easy to throw around you have a ton of confidence in the car it's very wide these tires are great in the limited model the suspension is great everything just feels so good mid corner you just feel so capable when you're driving in this car it just really can do anything and it just inspires so much confidence it really does you really feel like you can toss it around and feel completely confident in what you're doing now are there drawbacks to this car yeah there are still a few drawbacks rear seat room is atrocious so it's not really a four-seat car it's a two-seat car period the interior quality materials are fine at this price point especially they're fine but it's not like incredibly high quality or nice or anything like that that's not really the purpose behind this car and i gotta say at the end of the day it's still not the fastest car on the road if you're looking for something faster you can find it for this money for low 30 thousand dollars i mean you can get yourself into a lot of used cars that'll be really a lot quicker than this even two three year old cars um and that's a little bit of a drawback to this car but the finesse the the chassis balance i mean it's fantastic one of the best on the market today very very comparable to the miata i also want to say one other drawback i've noticed is that the clutch can be a little bit clunky at low speeds i've heard a lot of praise on this transmission and i generally agree with all of it it feels very good very slick when you're moving but at low speeds the clutch is maybe a little stiffer than you'd want and that makes it a little bit jerky at low speeds but that's really it everything else is so good in this car it's a fantastic car and frankly i think it's a great car for the money you know the average new car is almost 44 000 now and this one at 31 it gives you a lot it's not the fastest car on the road but it feels a lot faster than it was and it's fast enough to thrill you and the handling and steering and enjoyment in that respect have always been unquestionably fantastic truthfully i think this is a great car the old one i liked but i was never that into i always felt that they were making a mistake by not offering more power and i think that it's fantastic that they've finally given us a version of this car with more power and i'm thrilled with it and i think it's great and i think it's a real serious improvement over the last one in just about every possible way and so that's the new 2022 subaru brz the latest version of a very highly anticipated car it's not perfect and it's still not the fastest car on the road but in my opinion it's a huge upgrade over its predecessor it's way more fun i think it looks better and it is noticeably faster it's an excellent little sports car and now it's time to give the new brz a doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the new brz is nice looking better than the old one and i think more muscular and attractive and it gets a 6 out of 10. acceleration 0-60 is just under 6 seconds and it gets a 4 out of 10. handling is excellent really fantastic especially for this price point and it gets an 8 out of 10. fun factor is high given the performance and the toss ability and it gets a 7 out of 10. cool factor is only okay these aren't the coolest sports cars and i'm sure they'll be common similar to the old ones so it gets a 5 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 30 out of 50. next up are the daily categories and features the brz has decent tech but it's no standout and it gets a 5 out of 10. comfort is normal for a car like this and it gets a 5 out of 10. quality is good the interior's fine not great but everything is durable and reliability is likely strong here and it gets a 6 out of 10. practicality is okay normally coupes with a backseat get a 4 but this car's backseat is so damn small it only earns a 3 out of 10. value is strong for around 30 grand you really get an excellent complete sports card it gets a 7 out of 10 for a total daily score of 26 out of 50. added up and the doug score is 56 out of 100 which places it here against relevant cars it's a point ahead of the miata rf though the miata scores higher in the weekend categories and frankly i think the miata is more fun but the brz is a little more practical and a little more affordable and it's still an excellent car and a huge improvement over the old one [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 855,494

Rating: 4.904283 out of 5

Keywords: 2022 subaru brz, 2022 subaru brz review, new brz, new brz review, new subaru brz, new subaru brz review, brz, subaru brz, 2022 brz, 2022 brz review, doug demuro, demuro, toyota gr 86, gr 86, gr 86 review, toyota gr 86 review

Id: lYV3TwIkqC8

Length: 22min 35sec (1355 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 21 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Useful-ldiot]

The People: We want a faster BRZ!

Suburu: You got it! How about +20% torque?

The People: Awesome! We want a faster WRX!

Suburu: Go fuck yourself.

[u/pointlessBRZ]

Tiny thing I noticed: you don’t have to use the buttons on the top of the seats to fold them down, you can pull the straps hanging down in the trunk to lower the backseat. Same as the old car.

[u/pryan886]

Today Doug called an aux port old school, and I realized I’m not so young anymore. I remember it wasn’t that long ago I wanted an aux port in my next car to avoid dealing with tape deck adapters or those silly FM transmitters. Feeling nostalgic for a book of CDs on the passenger seat to hold all my burned mixes.

[u/Uptons_BJs]

Man, the infotainment in this thing looks 10 times better than the 2ds like one in the WRX.

​

I will never understand why Subaru chose to use that layout when they have a perfectly working one in the BRZ!

[u/j0hnislife]

Not like the "Dougscore" even really matters, but just wanted to point out that he scored the BRZ a 4 on acceleration when it's faster than both the Miata and the S2000, which both scored a 5.

edit: sorry my eyes are crooked. S2k scored a 5, and Miata is at a 4.

[u/4x420]

the styling is nice, i would actually consider getting it in white or light silver like this car.

[u/Rage_Your_Dream]

Jason Cammisa has answered the "baffling" decision to not make a more powerful version. It wouldn't be profitable, the moment it is more powerful it will be held with higher regard and no one will buy a lightweight sportscar with a cheap ass interior.

I don't really think the decision was baffling when the car sold pretty well, which is why they're making a new one with a little, but not overwhelmingly more power.

[u/Milk-Man75]

u/doug-demuro as a tall person how comfortable are you in driver seat of the 86/brz? I'm about the same height as you but a lot of it is from my torso. How much head room did you have to spare and would you be comfortable on a 8 hour trip in it?

[u/editwowthisblewup]

I want one