Jap vs Euro Cars (1 Viewer)

anomalousdecay

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#jdmyo

sticker bomb your car and it's instantly jdm, even if it's a commodore.

*Bommodore

Anyone have thoughts on the reliability of the boxer over flat 4 for older vehicles?

Getting new car soon. We have a boxer, and Its a nice ride.
 

brent012

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A 4 cylinder boxer is a flat 4, term you might be looking for is straight/inline four? Anyway how old are we talking lol? Pretty much the only 4 cylinder boxer in the last 20 years are Subarus, I think the ej25 in some of the late 90s libertys had head gasket problems briefly but besides that I think all other subaru engines are relatively bullet proof. Even with those problematic head gaskets, as far as I know a replacement or after market part fixes the problem for good - so if you know what you are looking for and/or it's a good maintained car I wouldn't worry about that.
 

anomalousdecay

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A 4 cylinder boxer is a flat 4, term you might be looking for is straight/inline four? Anyway how old are we talking lol? Pretty much the only 4 cylinder boxer in the last 20 years are Subarus, I think the ej25 in some of the late 90s libertys had head gasket problems briefly but besides that I think all other subaru engines are relatively bullet proof. Even with those problematic head gaskets, as far as I know a replacement or after market part fixes the problem for good - so if you know what you are looking for and/or it's a good maintained car I wouldn't worry about that.
Yeah I meant a vertical 4, instead of the horizontal boxer.

Our boxer is a 98 liberty , and I'm not 100% sure if there are oil drops or water drops under the car sometimes.

They don't permanently stain, and there is only 2 or 3 drops max. That might be in relation to the head gasket. The engine is a fuji ej, but I'm not sure if its a ej25.

We might keep it because I need a car for uni travel, so we need to buy another. But the thing is that we fear that we may need to sell it, as its getting too old. Its only done 180000 though, which is much less than what 15 year-old cars usually do.
We are trying to go boxer with our new buy. We have never had a car as good as this liberty.

P.S. There have been many boxers in the past: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_engine

I think that the ruf's of the 80's/90's were also boxer engined.

And the new 86 should of been branded a Subaru.
 
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brent012

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P.S. There have been many boxers in the past: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_engine

I think that the ruf's of the 80's/90's were also boxer engined.

And the new 86 should of been branded a Subaru.
Yeah - I said flat 4, the modern porsche boxer engines are flat 6s (only the 356, 914 and 912 had 4 cylinder engines iirc). RUF is just a porsche tuning company, they didn't make engines in the 80s/90s and only make a very low volume flat plane v8 atm - most RUF cars still use porsche engines.

The 86 has a Subaru engine.

Edit: Actually I think beetles were still made well into the 90s in Mexico, so assuming they still had the air cooled flat 4 that would technically count.
 
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anomalousdecay

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Yeah - I said flat 4, the modern porsche boxer engines are flat 6s (only the 356, 914 and 912 had 4 cylinder engines iirc). RUF is just a porsche tuning company, they didn't make engines in the 80s/90s and only make a very low volume flat plane v8 atm - most RUF cars still use porsche engines.

The 86 has a Subaru engine.

Edit: Actually I think beetles were still made well into the 90s in Mexico, so assuming they still had the air cooled flat 4 that would technically count.
Oh yeah. My bad. I thought ruf actually made the cars lol.
Yeah the 86 is made by fuji.

Weren't the beetles the first cars to not use a water cooler? My dad said that Hitler ordered Mercedes to build a different cooling system, to prevent the water from freezing in winter or something like that. I've always wondered if that was true or not.

My opinion in general on machinery:

The Germans take the leap in engineering and make the new designs.
The Japanese perfect the German designs.
 

brent012

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Not sure - I doubt it was the first air cooled engine, but possibly the first mainstream one? The beetle and early Porsche's were "inspired" a fair bit by Tatra cars and i'm sure they used air cooled engines.

I think the whole Japanese/German thing you are mentioning really depends, the Japanese car industry only really started to bloom once it was hard to make something completely revolutionary so I guess it's all incremental stuff. The gentlemans agreement in Japan + high tax rates for high displacement cars fostered a lot of the innovations (+ the overengineering/undertuning leading to crazy aftermarket scene) in Japanese cars of the 80s/90s.

I guess something similar is happening in Europe at the moment which is why we are seeing more innovation from them now with lower displacement engines and everything being turbo charged, but there is no gentlemans agreement equivalent so all the euro engines are fairly high strung stock compared to the Japanese engines of the 90s lol.

You do realise an evo smashes a rexy in every way?
Except for price (well, not 22b), arguably sound and every day drivability.
 

anomalousdecay

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Not sure - I doubt it was the first air cooled engine, but possibly the first mainstream one? The beetle and early Porsche's were "inspired" a fair bit by Tatra cars and i'm sure they used air cooled engines.

I think the whole Japanese/German thing you are mentioning really depends, the Japanese car industry only really started to bloom once it was hard to make something completely revolutionary so I guess it's all incremental stuff. The gentlemans agreement in Japan + high tax rates for high displacement cars fostered a lot of the innovations (+ the overengineering/undertuning leading to crazy aftermarket scene) in Japanese cars of the 80s/90s.

I guess something similar is happening in Europe at the moment which is why we are seeing more innovation from them now with lower displacement engines and everything being turbo charged, but there is no gentlemans agreement equivalent so all the euro engines are fairly high strung stock compared to the Japanese engines of the 90s lol.
Yeah. Its a bit hard to get a confirmation on the beetle's first production line.

It depends. I've barely seen any Volkswagen station wagons from more than 5 years ago. The Germans are changing their production method now.


You do realise an evo smashes a rexy in every way?

I prefer an r35 or a r32 :haha:
I've never had a thing for Mitsubishi. So I prefer the WRX. Plus, after driving a boxer, I prefer its reliability over other vehicles.

A 15 year-old boxer was a much smoother drive than a 5 year-old tiida.

I don't have $100000 lying around to get an R35. I'd prefer the older R30 than an R32 lol. They look like a classic vehicle haha.
 

obliviousninja

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I've never had a thing for Mitsubishi. So I prefer the WRX. Plus, after driving a boxer, I prefer its reliability over other vehicles.

A 15 year-old boxer was a much smoother drive than a 5 year-old tiida.

I don't have $100000 lying around to get an R35. I'd prefer the older R30 than an R32 lol. They look like a classic vehicle haha.
Apparently the handling and performance of the evo is god-like.
 

brent012

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The MP4-12C engine is a descendant of a Nismo engine ;)
 

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