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Originally Posted by sp00ln
But it is almost the best car since sliced bread. First, it was under $20k, now it's just about $20k. Still pretty cheap. It comes with an awesome LSD system and with just some simple mods you can get 300whp. Amazing if you ask me. And the neon shell doesn't bother me - I actually think it looks pretty aggressive. Besides? What's a WRX? It's just a legacy shell?? What about an EVO??? It's just a lancer shell. All originally slow, family, commuter cars, not ment for sport, but rather just cheap, family orianted with decent gas milage. I think that's the point of keeping it a neon. And yes, I do agree with you to the point where they could have done things better, but then you loose the great aspect of a $20k car that can hand $30k cars their asses. The SRT4 is a tuners dream - cheap, fast, reliable.
This is just my opinion on the car. And when I look at the car, I do not see a neon, I see an SRT4. And I know if neon's never existed, you'd think the SRT4 was hot. If you remember, the WRX also had a shell to break. As I've said before, my friend was one of the first people in the Reno area to own a WRX - and when he'd tell people what he drove, people said "Eh... you drive a subaru? That sux." Now they say, "Sweet! A WRX is my dream car!"
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What I'm talking about is instead of tossing that powerhouse motor into a $20k neon, they could have tossed it in a $20k RWD sports coupe. Granted there'd be some R&D costs for a new chassis, or for converting the Neon chassis to RWD, everyone and their momma is crying for an affordable RWD car! Seriously, name one decent $20k RWD car. An affordable Dodge turbo hatch w/ RWD would have sold even better then the SRT-4... especially w/ the drift craze going on. That thing would turn up in all sorts of motorsports... instead of just at the drag strip and Club Rally.
So, no matter how awesome the SRT-4 is, there's a pretty long list of people that would never buy one simply because it's FWD... that's just one thing you can "tune" out of the car... the ugly looks, the crappy rim/tires, the sloppy suspension, etc, can all be fixed. The FF layout... not so much.
As far as other sports cars being based on econo-boxes... that's not really my point. Sure the WRX/STi, and EVO both have econo-brethren... The difference is that the performance models don't share the econo-drivertrain the way the Neon does. Hell, even the base model Subaru's have AWD... there is no econo-drivetrain!
And for the record... Subaru used to rally the Legacy. But they realized that to be competative, they needed a car designed from the start to be used as a rally car. That's where the Impreza came from. Subaru designed the Impreza shell to have all the features they wanted in their WRC car. Then they built one with "econo" running gear for homoligation purposes, and handed off the WRX to Prodrive and STi for the race car. So even though the Impreza is an "econo-car", it's an econo-car build into a race-car shell, not the other way around.