Automotive

The challenge he faced is that the car he produced actually had to turn out rather good instead of merely relying on brand (looking at you Herr Golf).  And he succeeded.  And there are similarities to my outgoing ride, the largely unloved-by-the-masses GT86, FRS, BRZ call it what you will.  The similarities are the goals.  The aesthetics of the drive.  However unlike the GT86, the ’N’ is actually really quite rapid (catapulting to the ton in 13s or so). The top ‘hot hatch’ of the moment may be the slightly-faster-at-the-track Type-R, but it’s 310+ hp is not relevant.  In fact, on the road, the ’N' may have hit the sweet spot between thrashability and real speed with the added soundtrack of childish overrun pops and bangs.  In any given era of tyre development, there is a perfect amount of power.  For B road driving in the tarmac rallycross world of the current road network, it appears to be Pirelli Zeros with 275 or so metric neddies.  

You know you’re in a thought out car when the rev matching can be left on for when you’re lazy, but as soon as you hit your favourite hard braking spot, intervene and pop in a rapid fire sequence of proper single blip but double declutch downshifts the computer blip is clever enough to switch off and stay out of your way.  Another key attribute of the ’N’; instead of being bound to someone else’s view of ‘Normal, Sport, Race’ you get to prescribe your own level of powertrain and chassis attribute for each feature.  There are 1945* combinations of settings.  *You may have read 1944, however if you do the analysis from first principles…… Bravo Bertie, selectable levels for pedal map, auto blip, LSD, steering weight, suspension damping, ESC level, and exhaust noisiness.  You can find what you need in there.  Finally a car that allows this.  Strange oversight considering the thought elsewhere, there is only one custom memory for you; there really should be two or three to suit different terrain/duties.  However access to each setting really is only a touch screen click of adjustment and on the fly, not requiring to be parked (looking at you Honda-san).  Bravo Bertie again.  With the investment of a specially developed tyre from Pirelli (marked HN) and even track tyre pressures listed in the handbook, a warranty that covers track use, effort on steering rack design, suspension calibration, even bump stop length, every effort seems to have been made - just sometimes within clever value controlled choices.  For example, the brakes are fantastic, but instead of coming from Brembo or whoever, were carefully selected from other HMC parts available.