Hey, goddamit, I had one of those. Its engine was tired, the shift linkage was sloppy, the electric fan was broken, but it ran ok and was fun to drive. Do not diss my old subaru.
I tried to talk my dad into buying a Brat once. I just wanted to ride in the seats mounted in the bed. I still don’t really understand how those were legal.
As I understand it, the tariff on a pickup truck was something like 10x that of a passenger car, so they put the jump seats in there as a way to pay the lower vig (“suv” was not a term in those days). At the time, most states did not have mandatory seatbelt laws, so they could get away with the handles.
don’t confuse “engineering” with spending more money on materials and noise management.
in my experience, “German Engineering” means “how many potential failure modes can we design in and still have the thing work?” Or simplified, “Why use one moving part when you can use 12?”
Example: here is the timing chain setup on an Audi V6/V8. Four separate chains. Which means four separate tensioners (one per chain,) and 2-3 guides per chain.
guess what was known for premature failure on those engines? If you guessed “the timing chain tensioners and guides,” you win the prize!
But wait! There’s more! Do you think Audi put the timing chain drive on the front of the engine like everyone else? No, of course not! They put it on the back of the engine, where it mounts to the transaxle. So to repair said failure-prone parts is an automatic engine-out job.
That was the nice thing about the Subaru flat-4: it had no timing chain. Or belt. The cam was driven by a gear. How much simpler can you get? Well, ok, you could get as simple as my old rx-7, which had none of that shit – instead, it had that fucking metered-oil tube running up the front of the engine. I was never able to replace the alternator without breaking that damn thing.
I have to say that I loathed my RX-7, and the stupid repair issues were a big part of that. I would have burned that thing with fire instead of trading it in if I could have afforded the financial loss.
that would have to be pretty old; all of the current OHC boxers have belt or chain drive. the original boxer was pushrod and other pushrod engines have had gears (e.g. the Ford 300 six-cylinder.) unfortunately, they need helical gears to prevent noise which are more expensive than a silent chain and sprocket setup.
If there’s one car I’ve owned that I truly can say I miss, it would be my '82 RX-7. That car was super-reliable for me, only ever needing work that I was capable of doing myself*, right up until I was rear-ended at speed by an F-350. After that, you could reach around from the driver’s seat and grab the rear bumper.
*Well, except that time that the clutch slave cylinder popped. But I was able to drive around for a couple of weeks without the clutch, so I don’t really count that.
I guy at work complained that his rx-7 was gutless. Sounded kind of odd to me. Then I found out it was an automatic. What the ever-loving fuck? I was not even aware at the time that they had automatics. Why the hell would you have one of those? The shifter was so smooth. It made no sense to me.
The first- and second-generation RX-7s were gutless. The third generation used sequential turbos, and had much more low-end torque.
I love the Skoda commercials during the TdF. Damn clever.
I drove a Mini the last nine years while in London and I’ve never had so much fun driving a car.
Driving that thing across Scotland, Wales and Ireland was an absolute joy.
Giving it up was painful.
That hurts! Because it’s true.
That said, I still loved that car light weight and good handling go a long way toward overcoming a power deficit.
The third generation is hardly seen on the road these days. I see more first, and even second gen RX-7s out there. Those third gens are a rare sight.
Mine would spin out if a squirrel breathed on it. I hated that car.
It is all in how you drive it. One night I had to go up a sleet-covered 6% grade, and it was pretty scary in that thing, but I made it. Guy in the other lane decided halfway up that he was not going to make it, so he pulled off the road. Struck me a acme stupid, because once you stop, there is no starting up again.
Huh. I drove the piss out of that car, in the way only an immortal 20 year old dude can. I was living in SW Virginia at the time. Had he most amazing assortment of forgotten backroads and I treated it all as my own personal Targa Florio. I found the car to be quite neutral, as per their big advertised feature, 50/50 weight balance.
It certainly was terrible in the snow, but I recall one major blizzard when I lived in Virginia. I was visiting a friend in Norfolk, and saw that they were going to be closing all the freeways for safety on the day I was to return. Being young, stupid and immortal (see above) I left anyway. It took me close to 13 hours to make the normally 4 hour drive. I showed up at my girdriend’s house to a lesser reception than expected. Then promptly got dumped. And had to walk home since my car was then truly stuck. Tough day.
Last night I remembered a car commercial that sucked. A BMW is shown driving through a huge puddle and soaking folks waiting at a bus stop.
Then an Audi is shown swerving around the same puddle, thus saving the bus people from a soaking. (I think I’m remembering this correctly, it was on a few years ago).
So BMW = asshole
Audi = good
It was just a little over the top . . .
Gosh that’s beautiful to look at. But totally insane as engineering.
As a friend of mine said while riding shotgun through some illicit maneuvers in my BMW years ago: “Go for it; you’ve got a reputation to uphold.” He was mostly kidding, but it wasn’t a compliment. 
I recall one commercial even worse. This was in the height of the SUV craze before the big oil price spike in 2005ish. The details are fuzzy to me now but this is the best I can recall.
Two Moms are at a girls softball game The kids are about 8 or 10. Our hero is a small petite sort who gets figurative sand kicked in her and her daughter’s face by the other meany Mom. A quick snub about her kid’s playing and a second snub about the small Mom’s clothes or looks. A real one-two punch of executive trophy Mom snippy aggression.
Next cut the small slighted woman is seated in her Hummer H2 lording it over all the mere mortals she’s cutting off while her child is safely playing on her pink gameboy behind her in the heavily armored urban assault vehicle. The voiceover at the end is something close to “Hummer. Own the road.”
Assholes.
The OP is quite a rant. How nice for you.
Many people consider vehicles to be driving appliances. Others consider them to be hobbies. Others just consider the label as a status symbol. It takes all kinds.
I’d rather push a BMW than drive a Lexus. Useless up-badged Toyotas every one of them.
As I said above, the Germans do have a bad habit of sophistication for its own sake. The Japanese in the fancier brands have a similar failing and it’s not obvious to me there’s that much difference in the end result. You can always find complainers about any brand.
For darn sure all the top models of the prestige brands are not designed to be bought for cash and driven until the wheels fall off. They’re designed to be leased for 3 years on a fat-cat tax-deductible lease then who cares what happens next.
If somebody really wants to buy 500K miles of maintenance-free basic transportation I’m not sure which car in 2017 one ought to buy. Said another way, as much as that goal sounds like Mom and Apple Pie to some of us, not one buyer in 100 actually wants that product. So no manufacturer builds it.
Whenever I see an aggressive driver, 75% of the time they are driving a Mercedes, Audi or BMW. They are Douchemobiles and people that drive these cars are douche bags.
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