ralphandcarol

Whilst filling up my STi today I had a thought, not often it happens I know, but would still like your opinions on it.

We now have Shell V power and (in most of the country) Tesco 99 so why are we still being conned by IMH into buying lower powered and lesser specced STi's. The answer used to be because of lower octane fuels etc, but this does not wash anymore.

The only reason I can think of is the amount of money that would be lost by Prodrive not being able to charge silly money for their PPP "performance" packs because the cars would already have higher outputs and specs than their upgrade.

Do you not also think that the showroom price of the STi's would have to go down as they would no longer need "modifying" to UK spec, therefore, off the production line onto the boat and sold in the UK without any extra work/charges/expense.

Ralph

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Nice as it would be to be able to sell a single car worldwide, differing safety and emissions laws make that virtually impossible.

One of the main reasons we now have the 2.5 block is because it's difficult to make the required power output with a 2.0, now that the car has to pass Euro IV emissions.

The car must be EU Type Approved, and therefore must meet EU safety and emissions regs, in order to be registered in the UK. Once the car has been registered, though, in practise it only need pass the much less strict MOT regs. That's how packages like the PPP work - tune the engine for more power and higher emissions.

Getting EU type approval is a hideously long and expensive process, which is why the EU-spec engine stayed almost the same for years while the JDM engine received major improvements.

MikeWood

Ralph

Subaru UK sell the ONLY spec of car that is available for them to sell in the UK. There's a small thing called EU Whole Vehicle Type Approval that needs to be taken into consideration, without it you can't sell a car in the UK. JDM cars don't comply and therefore can't be legally sold in volume in Europe. Subaru UK also have to take the spec of car that's built to be sold all around Europe, they can't decide unilaterally the spec they would really want to sell. If they could, it may well be a little different to the spec that's currently available here.

To answer your other point, I don't know of a standard STi model that's quoted at a higher output than the 06STi PPP. The price of the upgrade reflects the amount of work that goes into the development, it's a long way from being done by the approach that some aftermarket 'tuners' take of throwing some generic parts at the car and turning the boost up You may not be aware but our packages now have National Type Approval for the UK which guarantees that they meet emissions and noise limits for new car registrations and is unique in this market.

There are however some JDM cars sold in the UK, as one of the most obvious dealers has spent a not inconsiderable amount of money on getting them into market and remaps them to suit, I think it's fairly safe to assume he wouldn't be doing that if it wasn't necessary..........

Regards

Mike

Tidgy

after having a chit chat with the local dealer manager, subaru uk are a bunch of retards.

going abbck a few years the reason the sti wasn't available in th uk was cos they thought it wouldn't sell. righto, then how come so many were and are imported???

this is still the same with the spec C etc. and tbh sounds like most of the dealers arn't very happy about it cos they have lost so many sales to imported cars that are slightly hgher spec for same, maybe even less money

SPEN555

The logic behind it totally baffles me!

The JDM has nice modern clocks in.... but low and behold Europe get dashboard clocks that look like something from a bottom of the range Pug 106! Hmmm... me thinks it's all about cost a making money.

RMA26

Afternoon Spen - Will send you those pics from yesterday this week

EVOLUTION

Mike,


Not a dig here, but.....


You say the vehicle NOW meets type approval and noise reg ETC, when did this come about?

The reason i ask, is that when i bought my WRX PPP (may 2005), the vehicle had to be registered on the road before this could be fitted. Dealer told me it was down to the exhaust and it not meeting the regs, is this or was this true?

And how did the WRX 300 manage to come as standard with the PPP, or was this in fact a bit of a white lie, were the PPP's fitted as a retro fit item again?


Thanks


John

ralphandcarol

Mike,
Thanks for your answer and some of it does indeed make sense, on the other hand however some does not.

I must admit I had forgotten about type approval (I did say that I don't often think) but is the JDM car really that different in its emissions to that of a UK car? and surely the rest of the car must be the same or very similar spec worldwide in respect of it's saftey enhancements ie: airbags, side impact bars etc. The only market I can think of that seems to have totally different requirements is the USA, correct me if I am wrong.

A few years back when I bought my first Impreza I got very friendly with my local dealer to the point where we are personal friends today although he is no longer a franchisee. On a fairly regular basis (or so I am led to believe) all franchisee's were invited to IMH to talk about the feedback they were receiving from their customers re: specification upgrades, at that time these included Rear screen wash/wipe,folding mirrors and many other things, forgive me I cannot remember exactly what but I am going back 8-9 years. Time and time again these items were requested and time and time again these requests were ignored by IMH, this is why the "paralell import" scene took off the way it did.
In many respects this is still happening today, the JDM cars are generally higher spec than ours, Why is that so? Xenon headlamps,different clocks etc cannot affect type approval, can they ?

Also we ALL know that it is the "gentlemans" aggreement in Japan that keeps the quoted power output at 280bhp, would this not account for your MY06 PPP car having a higher quoted output when in reality we all know the JDM cars are much higher in reality.

Ralph

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Dont have any problems with my MY03 JDM Spec C Mike
318bhp on the original map, just an sti panel filter (jap market) and bags of torque
They dont need a remap but if they did you can get a bit more out of em

Tony

EVOLUTION

the UK cars have an extra cat in, foglights, iim sure there are more too

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

I do know for a fact that getting a recent JDM car through the emissions test required for a Model Report is difficult. It's not just an ECU tweak that any grease monkey could do, contrary to popular assumption. It doesn't mean that the JDM car is inherently much more polluting in practise than a UK car, just that the specific tests it's designed to pass are different. Suffice to say there's a very good reason why only a handful of importers can bring in new ones and get them registered.

HID lights certainly do affect type approval - in Europe they're required to be fitted with washers and self-levelling mechanisms, which the JDM Impreza doesn't have.

The clocks have to be converted to MPH, of course, but I believe that the latest '06 cars do indeed have the smart red dials, like the JDM car has had for several years. That was probably just a commercial decision.

Going back 8-9 years, there was quite a waiting list to get a UK spec impreza at all. It was quicker (and, if you knew what you were doing, cheaper) to import WRX and STI models from Japan. The higher spec was a nice bonus.

dave_sw1

I don't understand subaru UK, I mean they give you 3000 of fuel with an STI why not just knock 3000 off the price, I got an import spec D sti for 23,500, 5000 cheaper for the same car, subaru know this is going on, but they don't lower the price, they just give fuel vouchers?

EVOLUTION

they more than likely got a deal on 100,000's of gallons of fuel. Each 3K fuel ticket probably only cost them 2K - 2.5K, where as giving you 3 K off a car is 3K they dont get from your pocket.


it also sounds better than 3k off IMO

MattW

And the fact that you will use them over a period of time meaning that it is not a big pay out in one go.

Bugatti

Alot of manufacturers offer similar incentives like cash back and no vat. The reason they dont just knock the money off the list price is because if they did then all the second hand market prices will also collapse to reflect this drop.

Naz.

Marky9074

You think the second hand market hasnt collapsed? I wonder why my WRX300 is only worth 15k when it should be a lot more.......because Subaru are throwing away 3k of free fuel.

The free fuel / free ppp / free servicing has screwed residual values on Impreza's for the last three years (and probably more).........getting fed up with it TBH.

MikeWood

To answer some of the points made above

"going abbck a few years the reason the sti wasn't available in th uk was cos they thought it wouldn't sell. righto, then how come so many were and are imported???"

Subaru UK have ALWAYS thought that STi would sell, it just wasn't available to them as it was felt it couldn't be Type Approved. The only way that the P1 happened (basically an STi that was sorted for UK use) was that the late President of STi made it happen as he'd promised Subaru UK that it would, despite internal resistance in Japan. Subaru UK's committment to making this happen was staggering, they wouldn't take no for an answer and they worked very hard on behalf of their customers to achieve what we all wanted.


"You say the vehicle NOW meets type approval and noise reg ETC, when did this come about?

The reason i ask, is that when i bought my WRX PPP (may 2005), the vehicle had to be registered on the road before this could be fitted. Dealer told me it was down to the exhaust and it not meeting the regs, is this or was this true?

And how did the WRX 300 manage to come as standard with the PPP, or was this in fact a bit of a white lie, were the PPP's fitted as a retro fit item again?"

For 06MY we (Prodrive and Subaru UK) took the decision to get the packages Type Approved so they could be fitted pre-registration rather than just post-registration as had been the case previously. This was so that, if necessary for an SE or similar, it could be fitted at the Distribution centre so that the customer doesn't have to be inconvenienced by having to register the car some time before he can take delivery of it with a package fitted. The standards applied to pre and post registration noise and emission are different but the fact still remains that the packages are legal for all MY cars. Previous packages had to be fitted post registration as they hadn't been approved, not because they couldn't be approved. It costs time and money, a price which no customer seemed to want to pay.


"I must admit I had forgotten about type approval (I did say that I don't often think) but is the JDM car really that different in its emissions to that of a UK car? and surely the rest of the car must be the same or very similar spec worldwide in respect of it's saftey enhancements ie: airbags, side impact bars etc. The only market I can think of that seems to have totally different requirements is the USA, correct me if I am wrong."

European spec cars have much more in commom with a US car than JDM. We have huge pressure to add all the safety features, side airbags being an obvious one that don't appear in the buying process as being as important to a Japanese consumer as they are to the 'Safety Police' that condemn a car in Europe because it's not got a full body cushion airbag zone around the occupants and is therefore 'unsafe'. Personally I'd rather have a supportive seat so I'm in control of the car properly in the first place, than an airbag that tries to stop me getting hurt when I've crashed because I've fallen out of the seat, but that's only my opinion.

EU and US emissions tests are quite similar whereas the Japanese test regime is different and is much more focussed on the emissions of the car when it's warm. That's why EU and US cars have secondary air systems and pre-turbo cats to get them working as soon as possible after start-up and therefore explian why it's very difficult, if not impossible in most cases, to get a JDM car to meet the latest Euro 4 limits.


"On a fairly regular basis (or so I am led to believe) all franchisee's were invited to IMH to talk about the feedback they were receiving from their customers re: specification upgrades, at that time these included Rear screen wash/wipe,folding mirrors and many other things, forgive me I cannot remember exactly what but I am going back 8-9 years. Time and time again these items were requested and time and time again these requests were ignored by IMH, this is why the "paralell import" scene took off the way it did.
In many respects this is still happening today, the JDM cars are generally higher spec than ours, Why is that so? Xenon headlamps,different clocks etc cannot affect type approval, can they ?"

Subaru UK do have regular meetings with their Dealers to get feedback and discuss future plans, in fact there's one going on right now. The points raised at these meetings are always fed back to Subaru in Japan and are given full consideration but if it's something they aren't offered, they can't take it. One basic spec is built for Export markets, albeit with minor variations for some particular issues such as WRX gearing being lower for Australia to help 0-100kph acceleration figures. This does mean that the top speed is restriced for this spec, which isn't a problem for an Australian owner as he doesn't see top speed as being important but a German customer might.

As overall vehicle speeds are lower in Japan, having a rear wiper on a saloon car is a huge benefit to an owner there as it never clears due to the water being blown off in the airflow like it would here (if you weren't in a traffic jam!) How many European built cars have a rear wiper on a saloon? In Japan there is huge pressure on space so having electric folding mirrors is vital to make you car narrower to fit in the restrictive parking spaces. Most other markets don't have the same requirement so it's not as high on the 'must have' list.

Remember that the UK is a part of the European market but the volumes aren't high enough on some models to justify a different build spec, even if it was possible to do. Without fully understanding the way the cars are built it may not be possible to appreciate this but it's just not possible to always achieve what you really want with the system that's in place at the moment.
Parrallel Imports are to the same EU spec as our cars so don't get the things that we don't get either. Grey Imports are different in many respects due to the local legislation that applies being different to EU WVTA. Until 06MY, no Subaru had self levelling headlamps so no EU car had GD lights.


I hope this has helped to further the understanding of the real situation rather than continue the 'conspiracy theories' that some on here seem to feel are correct. Subaru UK are more passionate about the brand than most give them credit for but they do have boundaries to operate within that aren't immediately obvious to everyone.

Mike