The Toyota GT 86/Subaru BRZ: The RWD coupe Alfa should be building

By now the hype regarding the new RWD bargain exotic co-developed between Toyota and Subaru is all over the internet. In particular, the most recent Chris Harris video (below) makes it clear that this car will really be something special for all those who love RWD sports cars with soul.

Watching Harris powerslide the GT 86 through the corners of Jarama grinning ear to ear, I couldn't help but ask myself why the hell Alfa isn't making a car like this anymore. Sure there is the 8C, but it's a limited edition toy for the few, not a volume fun machine for the many, as the GTV6 and Giulia Sprint/GTV were.  Instead, Alfa is planning the inexplicable mid-engined 4C to be their entry-level sports car. And I just have to ask why they can't just go back to a winning formula of making great-sounding, great handling RWD cars that look sensational, at prices that compete with Infiniti rather than Aston Martin.  As an Alfista, I feel this new Japanese offering is the closest thing to what an Alfa is supposed to be like, but it lacks two crucial components: The sound and the looks.  My quick 15 minute photoshop job up top is not meant as a suggestion of what the car should look like, (it's still pretty ugly) but rather how much I long to see the Alfa Grille on anything approaching an affordable front-engine, RWD sports coupe again. I do hope the production 4C will exceed my expectations, but until then, I will keep dreaming of the day when Alfa finally gets back to the cuore sportivo.

Subaru's "Choose your own Adventure" Multi-view Rally-Cam!

Subaru of Canada has a particularly cool new set of videos on youtube that allow you to select from a variety of simultaneous camera angles while watching driver Pat Richard and navigator Alan Ockwell pilot their WRX STI through some thrilling terrain! Enjoy!

Truth in Advertising: the 2011 Mediocrity

Last month, Subaru unveiled a series of hilarious videos poking fun at mainstream family sedans. If you haven't seen them yet, you have to at least watch this one, which features earnest, hardworking designers articulating their vanilla-tinted vision of motoring ordinariness. The ads are funny, but they do sort of dance around the hard question of why it is that mediocrity is so pervasive in corporate design culture --even at Subaru. Sorry guys but the B9 ("benign" like a tumor that won't kill you?) Tribeca is nothing but warmed over Alfa 147 design cues stretched to grotesque proportions.

In reality, designers usually don't sit down and figure out how to make an intentionally bland car, but somehow at the end of the process a bland car is what results. If only it were a question of just setting out with the right goals from the start, but in truth mediocrity is a result of an insidious and self-destructive corporate culture that warps otherwise talented individuals into collectively ruining the fruits of their own labor -- a non-process that twists good notions into bad results.  What I love about this campaign is to see the truth of it all so perfectly labelled: Mediocrity is the only way to describe it.