u/rebirth112

I'm facing a dilemma and I'm hoping you guys can give your opinion.

A couple years ago I got a job promotion, and I bought a new '23 Subaru BRZ which I have to this day as my first new vehicle ever. A year after that I ended up getting into motorcycles and since then I've been more into motorcycles than cars.

To be honest, I never really vibed 100% with the BRZ because of its questionable build quality, glitchy carplay/electronics, engine character, or NVH (I took a 10 hour road trip in the car a few weeks ago and me and my gf were almost going deaf on the highway lol). It handles great and it has a manual transmission, and I still love sliding the rear around from time to time, but I find myself in traffic so often that it becomes a pain to use (I was in 1.5 hour of stop and go a week ago). I'm pretty sure I've spent 40% of my ownership time with it in 1st gear slipping the clutch in traffic.

I live in the Vancouver BC area and we basically have the highest gas prices in the country (premium gas prices right now are averaging 243.9¢ per litre which converts to around $6.47 USD per US gallon, keep in mind our salaries are significantly less than places like California with similar gas prices). Not sure if this is common knowledge but the boxer engine in the 86/BRZ is not very fuel efficient, I'm getting 9.6L/100KM or about 24.5 MPG, which is literally worse than an average litre bike.

My commute to work and back contains zero twisty roads, and getting to roads that are actually fun requires time investment during odd hours, and I find myself taking the bike more often since it's more engaging and also cheaper to run. All of the stuff that I thought I would do in the car (track days, multiple canyon runs, highway runs, road tripping) I ended up doing on the bike instead.

I feel bad about contemplating selling the car because I understand that it's a special car that probably won't be made 10 years from now because of emissions regulations and lack of sales due to it's niche, but I also feel like I'm not really having fun with it as much as I wanted to. My bike is in the shop right now because I ran over a piece of someone's bumper and ripped off my bottom left cowling/fairing and I've been spending more time recently driving, and I honestly haven't been enjoying it much.

I'm at the stage where I'd rather have a comfortable daily that's efficient and quiet so that it doesn't beat me up and annoy me in stop and go traffic after a long day at work or leg day at the gym. I'd even be okay with an EV at this point. Funny enough, my girlfriend was looking at leasing a Fiat 500E and I did a test drive with her, and even a questionable Stellantis product somehow feels more livable and comfortable than what I'm dailying right now lol. I live in an apartment so having two cars with a motorcycle isn't really possible.

Can anyone else relate?

If you brake too hard and trail brake into a corner but only realize you're going too slow mid corner, are you supposed to get on maintenance throttle earlier? I have a habit of doing this and realizing mid corner that I could have gone faster, but i'm not sure whether to just let off the brakes and engine brake and only add throttle when I see the corner exit, or to apply maintenance throttle.

In this situation I have probably released the brakes even before the apex as I am too slow. Sorry for the confusing question, I've only done 1 track day...

This isn't to dog on anyone who lives in a detached house, nor is it really about the other municipalities surrounding it (Burnaby, Surrey, Richmond etc.).

When I think of why people would prefer suburbs, I'm thinking people prefer larger spaces (both in their home and the roads), less traffic/easier to get around by car, at the expense of being more car dependent and less walkable. Whereas someone may prefer a highly dense urban area for access to different shops and amenities via foot, transit, or cycling, at the expense of less space (I am broadly generalizing).

Many Vancouver houses do not have garages, nor are they particularly large. Many homes are also very close together. There's also cases of entire houses being rented out to multiple people per room (this is more common in Surrey but it does happen in Vancouver), so some people end up living in a detached house which basically functions as an extremely shitty apartment. It's not uncommon to see entire streets just lined with parked cars because people don't have garages.

I work on Kingsway near the Purdy's chocolate factory/supporting housing unit and pretty much everything from there until Commercial is filled with single family housing. However, it's an extremely busy area with horrible car traffic, it's hard to get anywhere without feeling like you're going to get run over. Conversely, the buses in that area also get stuck in the same traffic the cars are in. So it's not particularly friendly for people who like suburban qualities, and it also doesn't have anything else going for it because there are so few shops and amenities in that area. It's not friendly to cars, it's not friendly to bicycles/pedestrians, and it's not a particularly nice place to be in at all.

I used to live near Queen Elizabeth park as well, renting a place there. Despite Cambie St being close by, there wasn't a whole lot more within walking distance in terms of every day needs. For example, the closest grocery store was Safeway, which was difficult to walk to because of the hills and roads (especially while carrying a lot of groceries). Prior to King Edward ave, it's also a horrible stroad, I used to see cars almost hit pedestrians all the time. This whole area also has very little bike infrastructure.

It sometimes feels like that if you want to make Vancouver worth living in, you have to be very specific about where you choose to live and work. What's the point of living in a congested overcrowded area if you the busses still suck, you still have to drive everywhere anyway, and you're stuck in a tiny house that you're overpaying for? And if you're a more suburban person, why would you bother living in Vancouver proper anyway? I live in a condo in Richmond right now, and I have better walking access to grocery stores, shops, and I actually have protected bicycle infrastructure outside of my condo. If I want to drive/take my motorcycle I can do that too. And many others here live in detached houses with far bigger space and garages to store their vehicles, something Vancouver houses tend not to have. Why would anyone pick living in a detached house in the middle of Kingsway?

3 years ago, I bought my first new car after selling my manual base model Civic Coupe. At that point I have never owned anything more than 160 HP, so the BRZ actually felt fast to me. I would drive it on highways with sweepers, twisty backroads, mountains, sea to sky, etc.

But I also could only afford 1 vehicle so I had to daily drive it to work. You would think 15-16 KM one way isn't a long commute, but crossing bridges in the Lower Mainland of BC is atrocious. Commuting to work could take anywhere between 30-45 minutes, and commuting home was nearly 50 minutes at a bare minimum, sometimes an hour or more. In the occasion of an accident on any of the major roads, there were times my commute was 1 hour 30 min home.

Suddenly, all the things that made the car engaging became annoying. The manual transmission became a nuisance in stop and go traffic, there are periods of the commute where it is almost 30 minutes of stop and go. The suspension that connected me with the road suddenly became punishing to me as I felt every one of the hundred potholes littered in my commute. The rev happy engine that already didn't sound that great became grating as I constantly heard it drone from 1500 - 2000 rpm while slipping the clutch. The rattles and shakes in the interior from the questionable build quality annoyed me even more. Not to mention that even without traffic, the entire commute only consisted of maybe two sweepers and rest straight line either highway or congested city driving.

I had the opportunity to work from home for a year and I also got more into motorcycles during this time (I currently ride a Suzuki GSXR 600, I've owned a Yamaha R7 and a super old ZX6R in the past now). Doing so gave me the opportunity to avoid the morning and afternoon rush hour commute, and enjoy my vehicles when I had the time to, but it was still difficult to get around after work (I don't live near any canyons or mountain roads, there are some farm roads near me but I don't want to go too crazy on them as people live there and kids play there etc.).

When I went back to working in the office, all the same problems came back to me. I wasn't even having fun doing the sweepers or pulls when I could, because I know I'd have 100x more fun on my GSXR because it's so much more visceral and violent. My BRZ is basically relegated to being a really crappy commuter car at this point (I've also daily'd both my GSXR and my ZX6R, but at the very least those bikes are more fun for the 10 seconds of highway pulls I do on my long commute).

Whenever I have any kind of free time and I just look at my car, I'm just reminded that I pretty much spent half of it's existence in stop and go traffic, and probably almost 15-20% of it's time slipping the clutch at the bite point. I'm going to try taking the car out further to more rural areas with better twists and turns this year, and try and recapture the same love I had for it when I first got it (I've done 9 hour day rides on my supersport bikes, so comfort in the BRZ is not really an issue at this point).

I think these type of vehicles are really only worth purchasing if you live in a specific type of environment where you can use them. They're not really fun outside of really twisty canyon roads. They don't really have the acceleration to be exciting on highway pulls or wide sweepers, and even when you drive them economically on a commute the fuel economy is like shockingly bad (9.8L/100km is what i am getting, which is like 24 mpg).

I think in an ideal world, I'd have a boring commuter car that's comfortable and good on gas (or even an EV), and I would have the BRZ and a GSXR for fun on the weekends or after work. I'm not sure how much longer I'd keep the BRZ, and I feel bad for even saying all of this, because I genuinely believe that the BRZ/86 are amazing cars that handle super well and really "talk" to you in a way that cheap commuter cars don't.

Does anyone else have a similar experience as me?

I commute from near Richmond Brighouse to Kingsway every day for work (I leave at 6:50 and I leave the office at 3:30) and I've noticed the congestion getting worse.

The morning is mostly the same (takes about 20 or so minutes) but the afternoon has gotten noticeably worse. It used to take around 35 minutes but it's frequently been over 45-50 minutes. Knight St bridge is just packed on both sides, when I'm across the bridge I just see lines of cars packed heading towards Vancouver (around 4 PM) to a degree that I've never seen before.

I'm wondering if this is because of the World Cup and if you guys have any similar experiences, thoughts?

Edit: Sorry for using FIFA in the title. Can't seem to edit it though

Fun question for you guys, I'm sure you guys can relate, living in a congested city and riding kinda sucks, so we go out further for rides. I have to ride at minimum 1 hour to get to twisty roads with no traffic. For the really good stuff usually it's 2.5-3 hours.

I usually make time every few weeks to spend a day doing stuff like this. Neither of my bikes (03 ZX6R, 24 R7) are comfortable, so it can be quite painful navigating stop and go in narrow lanes (can't lane split physically or legally in many places here).

Can anyone else relate? How far/how long are you guys willing to commute for a nice road and what kind of bike do you guys ride?

Hi everyone, I want to book a track day in my area (Westwood Motorcycle Club in Mission BC) and usually they offer coaches/instructors but I think it sold out because the option is not available anymore. Should I still book my first track day or should I wait for another time where I can get a proper instructor?

I'll be riding there because I do not have a way of towing my bike.

Yesterday I road my R7 for about 10-11 hours on Duffey Loop, I think it’s around 600 km? I was also looking at the iron butt page to see which people have done it and I see certifications for people with bikes like R1, S1000RR, Zx6r, R6.

Now I know the R7 isn’t as aggressive as a 600/1000 (my Zx6r is even more painful to ride) but it is still a pretty sporty position, and my whole body hurts and is sore today lol, I couldn’t even lift my left leg up last night.

How on Earth do people manage to do 1000 miles in 24 hours on these things?