D'oh. My bad!

Personally I dont think it is a RWD v FWD argument to be had here, a DC2 ITR would be up there as one of the all time greats, however that was designed from the onset to be a FWD sports coupe, not a family car.

Comparing a mass market BRZ/GT86 to a specialist Megane is a folly, apples and oranges indeed. If Toyota sprikled all the st and glitter on the GT86 that Renault has on the Megane, we would be looking at a completely different car. The fact is that the twins are designed not only for the typical PH'er, but also the old man that wants something sporty, it doesnt crash over bumps in town, returns decent mpg and doesnt have high consumable costs either that the Renault does.

Someone mentioned boobs and butts, I personally see it more as comparing real v fake boobs.

Indeed, it's a great car, but it's not a clean sheet design of a drivers car. It's based on the normal Integra. Other than that Lotus, no one has ever made a driver focused sports car from scratch and made it fwd, that I can think of. When Honda decided to make a brand new, driver focused car they made the NSX and S2000.

If you were spending 25k on a car you would drive them first and then decide, rather than base your decision on a magazine article.

Define normal. Were the recent generations of Integras ever sold as "cooking" family hatchbacks? Honda has the Civic for that market.

There were also the Ti, Xi and ZX (in 2 and 4 door form) with the 1.6 SOHC motor.

A hot hatch is inevitably an attempt to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, with varying degrees of success. Seems a lot of people are happy with the value for money proposition of a pig leather handbag if you glue enough sequins to it, though.

You might be right about the DC5, came in Type-S and Type-R forms with varying tunes of 2.0 in the Jap market I think.

I was talking about the DC2 generation, which just looking at some data also had the codes DC1 for 1.6 coupe, DB6 for 1.6 sedan, DB8 for 1.8 sedan (including a Type-R version) and even a 4wd option with a DB9 code.

What a load of nonsense. So the Toybaru is automatically the better performance car as it was designed as a performance car from scratch? I imagine there will be lines of M3 owners etc that would disagree.

It's automatically 'better' because it's RWD? A RWD chassis will always have certain advantages, if set up correctly. But is a 120d a better performance car than a 306rallye? Not even close.

By all accounts the Toybaru doesn't have the engine to exploit the chassis beneath. Which is a shame, as I was very keen on it being my next car. I'll still be testing one, just with lower expectations.

Firstly, you are overlooking the fact that the fundamentals of an M3 are pretty much as you would have them for a driver's car. People get rather snotty about it, but the fact is the BMW 3 series chassis is top notch. Everything is in the right place. The base cars are set up very soft and unresponsive, but it doesn't take much to release the inherent rightness of the package.

A 120d isn't better than a Rallye because it's got a horrid diesel lump and it's set up to be a mainstream shopping car. The underlying chassis is excellent and could easily be made competitive or better than a 306 Rallye as a driver's car if it had the same set up priorities as the Rallye.

Thirdly, opinion is clearly split on this - even in single magazine titles with Evo first giving the BRZ five stars, then revising that to 3.5 stars.

As I said above, just imagine what Evo would make of an E30 M3 with a torque converter auto. It too would probably come flat out last in their recent group test.

At best I'd say the jury is out. This is a car that splits opinions. The only way to be sure about it yourself it to drive one. And for god's sake make sure it's got the right box.