2013 Subaru BRZ Automatic

2013 Subaru BRZ Automatic 2013 Subaru BRZ Automatic
Instrumented Test

We’ve been pretty effervescent in our enthusiasm for Subaru’s first-ever rear-wheel-drive performance car. So ebullient, in fact, that we named the BRZ, along with its Scion FR-S identical twin, to our 10Best Cars roster for 2013. The new Subie sports coupe’s poise and balance on the road are incredible, as are its tactile responses to driver inputs to the steering wheel, shifter, clutch, and brake pedal—the car seemingly is hard-wired to your brain stem. Like you, we’re predisposed to a high degree of driver involvement, and the BRZ’s superb driving layout and ergonomics make that business a pleasure.

So it’s understandable to question how it is to drive when you surrender some organic involvement to an automatic transmission. Is the man-machine interplay as intimate? Does the car still finish your sentences?

Well, for a torque-converter automatic with fuel-economy-optimized ratios, the BRZ’s optional cog swapper does a decent job of finding the right gear for the road-load, engine-speed, throttle-angle, and vehicle-speed situation at hand, just as a skilled driver would do. The Aisin six-speed autobox, which is similar to the unit in the Lexus IS, peels off crisp shifts, crisper still when Sport mode is selected. Sport mode also delays upshifts to fifth and sixth gears when driving at lower speeds. The driver can choose ratios manually by pulling the stubby floor shifter into a tap-shift gate or by operating steering-wheel-mounted shift paddles. There’s a Snow mode that enables second-gear starts, and it shifts to the tallest gear available at any given time to help keep the rear tires from spinning. And no matter which shifting scheme the driver selects, the transmission initiates a curt, rev-match throttle blip on downshifts for a decidedly sporty flourish. Not bad for a plug-and-play gearchanger.

What the BRZ’s six-speed automatic can’t do, however, is launch the 200-hp sports coupe from rest with a 5000-rpm clutch dump. A fun-loving driver could, with a six-speed manual and ample clutch friction material and tire tread (or a dual-clutch automatic with launch control, for that matter). Nor will the autobox be as successful as a manual-wielding pilot at avoiding the boxer four-cylinder’s 3200-to-4800-rpm torque sag, which can make the BRZ feel momentarily boggy after an upshift.

Automatically Slower

And it’s just plain slower. At the track, the automatic BRZ was more than a full second tardier to 60 mph than our long-term manual-transmission test car, taking 7.5 seconds versus 6.4. Even in the quarter-mile, the BRZ autobox was 0.8 second more slothful than the self-shifted variety: 15.8 seconds at 92 mph against 15.0 at 94.

Although the BRZ’s appeal isn’t derived from a sensational array of performance data, the numbers don’t lie. The automatic’s ratios are a little taller than those in the manual, so the BRZ’s already-relaxed acceleration is even more leisurely. Plus, the automatic’s ratio steps between the first five gears are bigger, making it harder to keep the four on the boil than it is with the stick shifter. The automatic’s top two gears are overdrives, and fourth is direct drive—in the manual, fifth gear is direct drive. The extra 46 pounds of girth the automatic gearbox tacks on aren’t much, but they don’t help, either. If there’s an upside to opting for the auto-shifted Subie and more-relaxed gearing, it is better EPA fuel-economy estimates of 25 mpg city/34 highway compared with 22/30 for the manual-gearbox BRZ. But know that putting the pedal to the metal quickly makes those EPA estimates irrelevant: We saw an average of 24 mpg in the automatic BRZ over a few hundred miles of admittedly enthusiastic driving versus a laudable 29 mpg (helped by some long interstate slogs) over 10,334 miles thus far in our long-term manual car.