Subaru Impreza WRX STi sedan should return in 2011
Our chat with Subaru left us sensing that the Japanese automaker is moving their lineup in a much more luxurious direction than it has in current years, now there is nothing wrong with this approach to selling cars, in fact it is a pretty smart one, but what about the boy racer in all of us that lusted after owning the same blue and gold car that Colin McRae raced to multi WRC championships. One of our concerns with the automotive arm of Fuji Heavy Industries withdrawing from the World Rally Championship is that their cars could lose that competitive performance edge, but the entry level Impreza has been replaced by the more spacious Legacy as Subaru’s GT300 competitor in the Super GT championship and a much more mundane version is currently being campaigned in the Koni Challenge Series here in the U.S. which makes sense because even the old WRC car was a Legacy. So with all this attention being paid to the larger vehicles in their lineup what is going to happen to the STi? When I told the Subaru representative that my favorite of all time is the mighty 22B STi, he knew exactly what myself, and most WRX enthusiasts, were looking for in the next version of the best bargain sports car on the market. The 22B was built back in 1998 to celebrate the automaker’s 40th anniversary and by that point, multiple World Rally Championships. This special edition Impreza started out as a lightweight WRX RA coupe shell and then had a set of much wider rear arches to match the boxed front fenders that housed special gold BBS wheels, which widened the Subaru’s track and made it look just as bad as the WRC car.
When Subaru redid the Impreza and STi for 2008 the design included a new rear suspension that would increase back seat room, a toned down front and an overall much smoother body. They also tuned a bit of the STi’s edge out of turbocharged all wheel drive hatchback, a mistake they admittedly made but claim to have corrected with the 2009 model. Our other concern is the hatchback only option for the Sti, something that he promised me would be resolved very soon, and told me to keep my eyes out about the future of the high performance flat four powered four door. Form what we have uncovered on the internet it should arrive as a 2011 model.
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