Hot inline 4 reviews

[nrcooled]

Well the lease on my Focus (aka Fukus) is up. So now I am deciding on what car I should get. Yesterday, I decided to go for some test drives. What I am looking for is and out-of-the-box hotrod with a warrantee that my wife can take to the track and I won't have to worry too much about her. So braking, steering, and acceleration are very important. All of these must be easy to drive at the limit. The cars that I am looking at include:

-Focus SVT
-Mazdaspeed Protege
-WRX
-Spec-V
(Keep in mind these are all new cars)
I will do these in the order that I drove them:

1. Ford Focus SVT- pretty complete car. Somewhat supportive seats (seem like they're made for really fat people. Great stereo and logical gauge layout (plus oil pressure and oil temp gauges)
I found the car to be pretty wheezy up top. Seems pretty silly to have a 7200 redline with no reason to go up there. But over all a good ride and if you keep it on full boil then it's a pretty exhilerating ride. One big plus was the 6 speed is geared super tall so my wife won't be doing a ton of shifing around a road course. The brakes seem up to the task of slowing down the car and turn-in was sure and quick.

2. Subaru WRX- I think I set myself up for disapointment on this one. I really had super high expectations for the car. The seats were rock hard and still not supportive. The driver seems very disconnected from the car. Vauge steering (over assisted), you can't hear the exhaust note at all, and there is no power in the upper revs. It handled pretty well but it was hard to desipher what was me and what was the car (due to the vauge nature). It pulls really pretty hard in 1st and 2nd but anyother gear is worthless.

3. Mazdaspeed Protege- Great fvcking car! Smooth powerband...tourqey but pulls hard higher in the rpm range. Turn-in is precise and surgeon like, there were no times when I didn't know what the car was doing. The brakes feel like a vacuum, you hit them and just try to keep your teeth off the steering wheel. Very supportive seats and plenty of room for hauling the little one to track events. The most complete car I have had the pleasure to drive.

4. Nissan Sentra Spec-V- Not a bad car at all. A pretty good package with average everything. Average power, average brakes, etc. but still finished pretty high on my list. The only draw back was the massive amounts of tourqe steer. Also the wheel hop got annoying.


All in all I am going with the Mazdaspeed Protege (dependant on financing) Currently I am shopping for a good low interest loan so we will see how that goes.