2024 Subaru BRZ tS Is a Sharper Scalpel

In the Floriopoli pit garages, along the route of Sicily’s Targa Florio road race, there’s a roughly translated warning from the mayor to the residents of a local town. Dating to the race’s early days—which correspond to the invention of cars themselves—it reads, “Listen, listen. Tomorrow there is the car races. Keep inside the house children, dogs, pigs, and chickens. Who dies, dies because of their own fault, and the mayor does not take the responsibility!” We don’t know if a similar warning went out before we showed up with the 2024 Subaru BRZ tS, but we didn’t see any chickens.

Like Le Mans, the Targa Florio temporarily repurposed local roads as a racetrack. Unlike Le Mans, each lap included more than 2000 corners, most of them diabolical. If you’re looking for blind, off-camber, downhill, decreasing-radius, bumpy, wet, gravel-strewn corners, you might find all of that in a single left-hander in Sicily. Into this crucible Subaru threw the BRZ tS, which includes choice upgrades to the brakes and dampers. To paraphrase a certain mayor, whoever slides off a mountain, slides off because of their own fault, and the Subaru does not take the responsibility!

Although the tS doesn’t receive any additional horsepower, its 228 was more than enough for the sodden Sicilian backroads that comprise the Targa Florio route. The tS does get upgraded brakes—fixed four-piston Brembo calipers up front, two-piston at the rear, both squeezing upsize rotors—and we imagine they’ll help improve the BRZ’s Lightning Lap showing. Their gold-painted calipers will provide a flex on any standard-issue Toyota GR86 you might encounter. (The GR86 Performance package, though, is the BRZ tS equivalent, with the same Brembos.)

More important on the bumpy goat paths of rural Sicily, though, were the tS’s STI-tuned Hitachi dampers. The front dampers include variable valving to limberly accommodate high-frequency washboard while remaining general-purpose firm. It’s a purely passive system, but one that allows the tS to absorb surprisingly harsh impacts. The rear dampers have single-stage valving, and you can tell the difference when the front end gallops smartly over a heave in the pavement and then the rear end does a little mule kick over the same bump.

Aesthetically, the BRZ tS is defined by the dark-gray-metallic finish on its 18-inch wheels (like the Limited, shod with 215/40R-18 Michelin Pilot Sport 4 summer tires) and tS-specific grille and trunk badging. It also gets a subtle red BRZ logo at the corner of the headlights and black paint on the mirrors and roof antenna. Inside, there’s a prominent blue stripe on the seats, and the red starter button wears a slightly disingenuous STI logo. (There’s another STI logo on the instrument cluster too.) Dash trim is blacked out, and the seats are upholstered in black Ultrasuede.

Like all 2024 BRZs, the tS is fitted with the EyeSight driver-assist system, which was previously available only on automatic-transmission cars because Subaru wasn’t sure how to handle potential manual-transmission stalling problems when the car brakes on its own. The solution? Well, it’ll stall. But better to stall and not hit something, goes the logic. In keeping with its mission, the tS is manual only.

If the BRZ tS isn’t a full-send STI product, neither does it command a full STI upcharge. The tS costs $2650 more than a manual-transmission Limited, for a range-topping $36,465. That still seems like a bargain for one of our favorite sports cars, a 10Best winner in any form. It would have been nice if the roads dried out and we could’ve leaned on those big Brembos a little more, but the snotty weather helped remind us why we love this car in the first place, with the tail sliding benignly through second-gear corners as the flat-four chattered toward its 7000-rpm horsepower peak. The Targa Florio was last run in 1977, but behind the wheel of the right kind of car, you might imagine you were there. Watch out for those chickens.

Source: Reviews - aranddriver.com