automodellistagt

lol

and for sunday driver you cheeky sod

even crusing at 70 on motorways i may and i mean may crack 19/20

not for me, im 5'10" and 85 KG. Im not described as fat but have a heavy build and 'child bearing hips' and i find my self slipping and sliding all the time. I dont think you realise how rubbish the STi seats are until you sit in something better, like the evo 7's (i was actually shocked how much more focused that car felt but thats another subject).

its far too heavy at 1470 kg. I know its been a trade off between shell stiffness (250% stiffer then the classic?) that ultimately leads the newages to be much better handling cars, refinement and safety but 1 and a 1/2 tonnes?

i find its more accelaration rather then top speed thats hindered. Im not worried about doing 170 mph im rather more concerned with ingear accelaration, which is good, but should be better.

i dont know if its a combination of a heavy car and too stiff a spring / damper and not quite a firm enough brake pedal but i find slowing the car down at speed rather scary. The brakes on me old mans old clk230K were miles better, but then again they were assisted with various forms of electronic wizardry so.... ill try it on a track next year some time and wait and see....

yay

i would prefer the car to have either a) a quicker rack and b) a smaller diameter wheel. Heaven knows what the massive momo one fitted to the WRX's is like

personall preference but i dont think the 5 double spoke design suits the newage, 6 or more spokes would have been better (some people agree, because look at the popularity of the WR1 wheels pff-7'?)

and the m3. Looking back if had the same budget i would have gone for a evo5/6 or a type-r and left the newages well alone. May even have considered an r33 gtr

Gutmann pug

Bored of mine .......

Had it nearly 3 years. Still enjoy driving it, but I dislike it for most of the reasons you have mentioned.

The final issue with them and the one you missed is the hassle of selling the damned things. Soon to embark on that myself and not looking forward to it.

I have a hankering to drive round in £300 sheds for a while, so im gonna sell the scoob to do so Fed up with paying over £300 a month for something which sits in the garage half its life and costs over £1000 a year to insure.

Gary

Anyone fancy a TSL333?

flynnstudio

This IMO is the problem with hardcore MODS - you immediately reduce your potential sell to market to 5% of 1%...

Gutmann pug

I'd hardly call a proper custom map for my car a hardcore mod ....... It should be much safer than a mainstream one size fits all jobby. But I know where your coming from.

Gary

flynnstudio

It maybe reliable but it's undeniably extreme - in fact I'd wager a stock 225/227 PS WRX is far to extreme for 90% of the car buying public...every step up from that simply narrows this perception...The impreza with any mods immedialy becomes an enthusiasts car and the higher up the intensity scale the rarer those enthusiasts will become..

Same with Jap imports - one thing no one ever mentions is that they are often technically different (especially with wiring and electronics) from UK cars and have japanese script all over them and so your main dealers whilst willing to work on them will maybe take 10 hours to do something that your UK car get's done in 2hours....I know for a fact that our local nissan dealer has a nightmare with every jap 350z that comes in with work needing doing on electrics...yeah. you say 'go to a specialist' but it's all 'hassle' and they are far and few between - a 300 mile round trip when your car is playing up to some guy in sussex just won't cut it for 99% of people...

Same with your TSL333 - it potentially puts it beyond the reach of your local dealers knowledge and perhaps technical ability - it's a new variable in all diagnostic and troubleshooting etc etc...so your possible market is reduced to perhaps 50000 people UK instead of say 5 million for a stock WRX...

Gutmann pug

A re-map does not put it beyond the relms of your local dealer.......Neither does it change anything electrically. Your comment is like saying a new exhuast means a dealer cannot work on it anymore. Sorry its wrong.

I do however agree with your comment that a percentage of people want un-modded cars.

flynnstudio

I'm not saying they can't work on it - I'm saying they don't like it - I have inside experience of dealerships and there are customers who regularly come in and before you start the work they will menacingly quote the manufacturers time allowance for this job that they have gone and looked up somewhere - if you run over that for whatever reason they go ape****!- so I said potentially not absolutely - and mods from stock are all new variables - what when you come to need a new exhaust - will the 'off the shelf' exhaust complement the re-map like the current one or will they have to go hunting for one themselves ( cos a dealer won't enjoy doing it!)..They may live in a small town and the dealership might never have seen a TSL333 - are you 100% certain there manufacturers plug in diagnostics will not get tripped up by it's sensor data in the future when a few anomolies start occuring?
I know what your saying and in principle I agree but I'm just saying people (customers and dealerships) are amazingly inflexible and sensitive when it comes to paying for service, maintenance etc etc. Your probably surrounded by a whole tranche of specialists and have acquirred specialist knowledge yourself - your assuming your next owner will have the same interest...they may not...

I also know that most workshop techs spend their days doing routine services or work directly from the tech manuals for stuff they don't know and far from 'embracing' a challenge they view it as a major pain in the ****...( not they way I'd view it ) but still - how it is..

automodellistagt

it is a specialist car so selling it is a hardship unless your offering it for peanuts.... but that has its own problems

EddScott

I love my car. Even the crap bits just make me like it more.

If I have one regret its that I bought a Sonic Blue UK 4 door and I should have held out and bought an STI Type RA V-Ltd. The one with the blue seats, roof vent and Sonic Blue etc.

If I sell mine it will probably be for one of these or a type R V Ltd.

New_scooby_04

iTrader: (4)

Problem here is that we know the TSL package is well developed and experience has shown it to be reliable. Joe public picks up a copy of EVO and sees the review claiming that it's the best aftermarket conversion for PPP money and says "great, that'll be the one to have then"

BUT

They also read comments from Prodrive's Mike Wood, who -if I recall correctly- said: "The WR1 (which has less power and torque) goes right to the limit of what is acheiveable and reliable on the stock injectors and Turbo". Who are you going to listen too?!?! If you've gone for the TSL package your warranty will also be void, which most buyers won't like and many cars like this have been on the track -which punters certainly don't like.

We know that the above isn't a problem, and that a properly serviced and well driven example will be an excellent buy, but the punters don't; and they are relatively small in number from the outset; modifications compound the problem and will alienate many.

NS04

Gutmann pug

The prodrive upgrade ppp is for all cars, taking account for all variances from the factory. A custom map (if done by someone reputable like Richard Bulmer at TSL) is specific for your own car and therefore should be better for your car. WR1 probably isnt modded for more BHP as it would be unsafe on some engines, not all.

My warranty would be running out in a couple of months anyway so that arguement is irrelevant.

With a brand new or year old car your mod arguement is fair. However a subaru is a highly modded car, probably more so than any car of its ilk. Im not saying my car will be more desirable than a std PPP car BUT to a private buyer it will be more eye catching. I've got more power than you, bigger wheels than you, nicer shiney engine bits than you scenario.


Gary

New_scooby_04

iTrader: (4)

To someone in the know, you're most definately right Gary, especially when warranty isn't an issue. 'Bling' is always attractive to any buyer (wheels etc..), as for non-official power upgrades.....I don't know; every buying guide that I've seen says stay clear of engine mods! This is a rather unfair generalization necessitated by the fact that for them to say: beware of bad mods, would then require an entire issue on defining what constitutes a safe and unsafe mod.

I think "modding" also comes with a lot of undesirable baggage: Max Power scene etc... WE know that this view is nonsense, and that you have to judge individual cars on their merits, but does the punter who just wants to be assurred of a safe buy that won't blow up? Look at how many people we get on here who want a scooby, but don't know the first thing about them. Even the ones who are keen to mod, often don't know their **** from their elbow, talking about daft induction kits and dump valves....would they appreciate the value of a "proper job".

The issue is: how many people are sufficiently "in the know" to buy a car in a given state of tune.


NS04

New_scooby_04

iTrader: (4)

Let me put it this way: WE (i.e. the ones in the know) are not representative of the majority of the market for our cars. We are in the minority. We'd most likely have no trouble shifting out cars to a like minded person.

I'd suggest that the majority are more like PSLewis when it comes too buying a performance car (can't believe I just said that)

They want:

-Lowest possible milage
-Few owners as poss
-Full Dealer or specialist history
-Mature owners, not raced or tracked
-Not messed around with!

If they tick all these boxes, jobs a good un' If not.....

automodellistagt

interessting thoughts...

im not fussed about what prodrives mike woods says about the WR1, not because i shun his expertise position or am in a position to know better, but his conflict of interest (working for prodrive who mod our cars), i cant see him saying anything but. Maybe thats the cynic in me, but many tuners seem to think that (WRC Tech for example) the standard turbo and injectors can handle a bit more then the claimed 315 bhp. I suppose only time will tell when it comes to failures to these cars that are tuned with aftermarket maps andvarious other 'mild tuning' upgrades. Be interessting to see a comparison between tuned and stardard cars throughout their life.

I personally beleive that, like almost all performance cars that offer great bang-for-buck performance, the buying public often assume that these cars are built to take abuse. But these thigns are built to a budjet and corners have to have been skipped somewhere in order to save money and avoid them becoming the new M3's and costing a lot more. Therefore i personally am not expecting the car to last more then 60,000 miles without somesort of failure somewhere in either the engine, ancillaries or drivetrain. I bought this car to use it and i would prefer a car to fail at 60,000 from being drievn hard then nurse it into oldage to avoid expensive repair bills.

Some people are allways going to be attracted to the STI because of its 'heritage' and its bang-for-buck appeal. I think the same arguement can be applied, in sorts, to TVR's. Fantastic fun, super quick, and cheap to buy. The price you pay is its tendancy to go wrong....Most of these people will also consider taking into account aftermarket upgrades and most of them will be savvy enough to understand that these cars are weapons and not m3 'combined daily driver and super fast saloon car'

i think the arguement of having tuned packages applies to cars that are simply fast i.e. the cupra r's. Most people buying a Cupra are looking for a fast car that is drivable, not an outright weapon. Am i making sense?

flynnstudio

I think new_scooby_04 is right...this is why these cars are becoming worthless - they are all becoming unviable in the modern market to people with money cos they're just to 'individual' after tuning - they are percieved as high risk - this is why under 25's are buying 2001 motors for £6K and insuring them 3rd party...it was unheard of to get that kind of power when I was that age..

Take me for example - my last car was a porsche 911 - It was a highly specialised enthusiasts car - I did all my own maintenance and servicing - so I would not consider myself 'average car buying public' but that was a stock car (except SS exhaust) when I bought it and a stock car when I sold it - but it was still extremely fast and very exciting..I would NOT have considered that car with anything other than a brand leading after-market exhaust - I would have walked away even if they had swapped out the motronic for something else...exactly for the reasons new_scooby_04 has outlined.

Rightly or wrongly the 'high end mapping' /non-dealer tuning would immediately suggest to 80% of potential buyers (and insurance companies)

1) This car has been driven VERY hard - its not been 'one careful owner who used it for the occasional blast and trips to tescos'
2) the car had been tracked - which would lead me to assume it has experienced perhaps hundreds of 'hours' of 'on the limit' driving which generally a road car simply NEVER gets.
3) it's probably been time-trialled - multiple dump clutch starts, hard transmission wear.
4) maybe it's had a few fender benders, maybe even rallied, could of been a lot worse ?? rolled, jigged, fixed by a pro...??
5) If there was a few owners on the log book I'd be thinking wow- have they all cained the crap out of this car or just the last guy ? Were they all 'this hardcore' ? Can this car handle 3 'hardcore' owners?
6) I'd want to see numerous examples of the same car/with the same mods still running the same engine 100K miles + - I don't think I'd be able to ?Am I wrong? So I'd be thinking - ooh 56K miles on the clock - could be engine out in 20K...

Now you know that most of that may not mean it's not a great car - a compression test and a good mechanical inspection could put a lot of those worries to rest but 'on paper' it's a higher risk than a stock car you might buy from a middle aged family man who used it as a 'weekend toy' - again your simply striking 99.9% of people out of potentially even being interested in your car. Basically your looking to sell to a guy 'just like you'...and even you don't like it!!!

flynnstudio

BTW - rather than leave this thread on a downer - I'd say the silver lining is that at least there is a large body of dedicated hardcore enthusiasts who will ALWAYS want these cars because they are simply magnificent and well looked after offer simply unrivalled price/performance - the success of scoobynet is testament to that...

...and if it makes anyone feel any better just last week I know of a trade on a 6 month old BMW One series that cost £27K - even p/x'd only fetched a shocking £17K - so don't let the badge fool you - ALL cars are suffering right now..