The S is gone, long live the Hachi Roku
04-24-2013, 08:04 AM
#24
The one in the pic looks nice. Like an athletic 350z (instead of the bloated real 350z)
04-29-2013, 12:11 PM
#27
Registered User
Thread Starter
I've had the GT86 for just over a week now and I thought I'd give it a bit of a review.
It's difficult to give the engine a fair review at the moment since I'm still running it in but from the drive I had in one of the manager cars it lacked that dynamite kick you get when the Honda went into VTEC. That said it seems a very tractable engine and more eager to pull from low revs. It's also far more refined. No low speed kangarooing or any of the low speed handling issues the F20C had. I've been in the habit of blipping the throttle before pulling away at low speeds as a work around to ease the low speed handling but no need in this. There's also that lovely boxer burble from this engine. Lastly and least importantly I'm getting about 35mpg which I reckon I used to get about 25mpg in the Honda. Always a bonus
Gearbox. Slightly longer throw than the Honda but feel is good. Was a little notchy the first few miles but smoothing up nicely with a few miles on. I saw reviews for £500k cars that were compared less than favourably to the S it was that good. This isn't far behind; it is that good.
I'm beginning to push the chassis a little more. Not significantly but just enough to start getting a decent feel. It's a go-kart! Flat, very little roll at all. Stiff but supple. On crappy roads you're going to feel the bumps but not knocking my teeth out and certainly no scuttle shake. Not felt the need to start turning traction control off but it's early days yet. My favourite definition of the difference between under steer and oversteer is "under steer is when you disappear through a hedge forwards and oversteer is when you disappear through the hedge backwards". The car is new and not run in and the roads aren't wide and empty enough so far for me to start really hooning it. Let me give it a week or two more before I start with the drifting god lines
Interior quality is good to most things you touch. There's a row of switches for the air con that feel a little flimsy but are ok and look nice and I'm sure will last ok. Design is good too. Most controls are where you need them to be without going for a search and there are nice touches like a cubby by the USB input that fits an iPod nicely or a slot in the centre console that fits my samsung s3 perfectly. The kensei of the interior is nice too. Not found anything that jars badly but tempted to get one of my old check sheets out to try it out on.
Practicality is good. Loads of space in the boot. Had a full shopping trolley in the boot without having to resort to dropping rear seats. Truely large once you do that.
Audio is ok. A bit bassey. £1000 for the audio upgrade is a bit steep. The satnav system works well and the interface to my mobile and Internet system works brilliantly. Some of the apps take the wee-wee a bit with price though and need to play around with downloading. Shame you can't network to download directly and instead have to download to pc and then copy to the satnav.
Enjoying it. Enjoying that I don't have to worry about the mechanicals and can just have fun
It's difficult to give the engine a fair review at the moment since I'm still running it in but from the drive I had in one of the manager cars it lacked that dynamite kick you get when the Honda went into VTEC. That said it seems a very tractable engine and more eager to pull from low revs. It's also far more refined. No low speed kangarooing or any of the low speed handling issues the F20C had. I've been in the habit of blipping the throttle before pulling away at low speeds as a work around to ease the low speed handling but no need in this. There's also that lovely boxer burble from this engine. Lastly and least importantly I'm getting about 35mpg which I reckon I used to get about 25mpg in the Honda. Always a bonus
Gearbox. Slightly longer throw than the Honda but feel is good. Was a little notchy the first few miles but smoothing up nicely with a few miles on. I saw reviews for £500k cars that were compared less than favourably to the S it was that good. This isn't far behind; it is that good.
I'm beginning to push the chassis a little more. Not significantly but just enough to start getting a decent feel. It's a go-kart! Flat, very little roll at all. Stiff but supple. On crappy roads you're going to feel the bumps but not knocking my teeth out and certainly no scuttle shake. Not felt the need to start turning traction control off but it's early days yet. My favourite definition of the difference between under steer and oversteer is "under steer is when you disappear through a hedge forwards and oversteer is when you disappear through the hedge backwards". The car is new and not run in and the roads aren't wide and empty enough so far for me to start really hooning it. Let me give it a week or two more before I start with the drifting god lines
Interior quality is good to most things you touch. There's a row of switches for the air con that feel a little flimsy but are ok and look nice and I'm sure will last ok. Design is good too. Most controls are where you need them to be without going for a search and there are nice touches like a cubby by the USB input that fits an iPod nicely or a slot in the centre console that fits my samsung s3 perfectly. The kensei of the interior is nice too. Not found anything that jars badly but tempted to get one of my old check sheets out to try it out on.
Practicality is good. Loads of space in the boot. Had a full shopping trolley in the boot without having to resort to dropping rear seats. Truely large once you do that.
Audio is ok. A bit bassey. £1000 for the audio upgrade is a bit steep. The satnav system works well and the interface to my mobile and Internet system works brilliantly. Some of the apps take the wee-wee a bit with price though and need to play around with downloading. Shame you can't network to download directly and instead have to download to pc and then copy to the satnav.
Enjoying it. Enjoying that I don't have to worry about the mechanicals and can just have fun
04-29-2013, 12:50 PM
#28
Did you just start to get the feeling the S2000 was getting a bit leggy ... and not in some amazonian woman type way.
04-29-2013, 01:07 PM
#29
Registered User
Thread Starter
Yeah. Just lots of little things mostly.
Two rattles that had started up (one cured as a heat shield was resecured).
Door light switches getting dicky
Rust spots on one body panel
Needed to spend a bit of time doing jobs like valve clearances/tensioner shot blasting or whatever the attempted cure is these days
The forks were bound to have the geo bolts seized so if that needed adjusting would start to get expensive
I'd put a new radiator in 6 months ago, drop link went again on rear anti-roll bar. Replaced master and slave clutch cylinders a month before trading it.
£1000 of repairs in just under 12 months and based on the above niggles it wasn't getting any cheaper. No room to keep the S as a hobby car and was never going to last as a daily driver. With a £1000 repair bill it's £100 a month more expensive to have a brand new GT86. If that went to £2000 it about breaks even and it wouldn't be too much to expect that those would be the costs had I kept it.
Two rattles that had started up (one cured as a heat shield was resecured).
Door light switches getting dicky
Rust spots on one body panel
Needed to spend a bit of time doing jobs like valve clearances/tensioner shot blasting or whatever the attempted cure is these days
The forks were bound to have the geo bolts seized so if that needed adjusting would start to get expensive
I'd put a new radiator in 6 months ago, drop link went again on rear anti-roll bar. Replaced master and slave clutch cylinders a month before trading it.
£1000 of repairs in just under 12 months and based on the above niggles it wasn't getting any cheaper. No room to keep the S as a hobby car and was never going to last as a daily driver. With a £1000 repair bill it's £100 a month more expensive to have a brand new GT86. If that went to £2000 it about breaks even and it wouldn't be too much to expect that those would be the costs had I kept it.
04-29-2013, 01:13 PM
#30
That's about where i am currently - nothing actually broken on mine but i just get the feeling it's time for a change. Not quite into GT86 money yet, thinking a CR-Z but within 6 months i'd say i'll have changed. GT86 might be down to 15k by then so who knows