Car: Subaru Impreza WRX STi 330S
Prices: £30,350 - on the road
Emissions: 281g/km
Insurance Group: 20
Performance: Max Speed 155mph / 0-60mph 4.4s
Fuel Consumption: (urban) 18.4mpg / (extra urban) 28.6mpg / (combined) 23.7mpg
Safety: front, side and curtain airbags / ABS / EBD / VDC
Dimensions: Length/Width/Height 4415/1795/1475mm
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
Our Rating: 7.4 / 10
Subaru have come up with an Impreza WRX STi to properly rival Mitsubishi’s Evo X. Jonathan Crouch drives the 330S version.
If you doubt that motorsport really does improve the breed, then a car like Subaru’s Impreza WRX STi should offer all the reassurance you need. This car’s bloodline has been honed across rally special stages the world over, with a heritage that goes back to the early Nineties. ‘STi’ stands for Subaru Technica International and is the go-faster wing of Subaru, much as M is to BMW, AMG is to Mercedes or, more accurately, Ralliart is to Mitsubishi.
WRX Imprezas with well over 200bhp on tap have been officially imported into the UK since the turn of the century, with plenty of grey imports before that. However, it was only when this car’s rally replica arch-rival, Mitsubishi’s Evo, threatened to embarrass Subaru in the power stakes that the WRX STi version arrived in 2002, boasting an extra 60bhp in an effort to settle the issue once and for all.
It didn’t of course and Subaru quickly authorised tuners Prodrive to boost it close to 300bhp with optional kits aimed at keeping upstart Evo owners honest. The third generation STi model we’re looking at here got 295bhp from the start to deal with standard Mitsubishi Evo Xs, before the even faster STi 330S we’re driving here added a further 30bhp to the mix.
If you really want a car that will make you feel like World Rally Champion Sebastien Loeb on the back road home, then this four wheel drive replica rallycar will certainly deliver. Even the standard 296bhp version will jet to sixty in around 5 seconds with an urgency that makes you feel as if you’ve been clouted up the rear by a wrecking ball – or at least that’s what you feel once you’ve past 4,000rpm, when the turbo cuts in with a savagery clearly intended to make up for its slightly lethargic feel at low revs. The extra 60Nm of torque offered by this 326bhp STi 330S model comes in useful here but it’s still a very on/off experience, like the early turbocharged cars of the Eighties.
In other words, drive this car like you stole it and it’ll never fail to plant a huge grin on your face. Approach the whole thing in a slightly more restrained manner and the noisy exhaust, rather vague steering and lumpy ride might leave you wondering what all the fuss is about. Still, there are so many dimensions to the hard core STi driving experience that it’ll probably be difficult for this car’s target petrolhead audience not to find it an addictive drug. And a very personal one. Once you’ve mastered the intricacies of the
Let me give you a couple of examples. If, for instance, you want to change the front or rear end bias – like an F1 driver would – then the DCCD (Driver Control Centre Differential) lets you do it, via a switch on the transmission tunnel, enhancing either straightline ability or the car’s agility through corners. Then there’s ‘Si’ mode. Here, you can play with the throttle mapping via three different modes. It’s a sign of our times that one of them (‘I’ for ‘Intelligent’) is aimed at keeping the engine economical, with a change-up light for efficient driving. Do the decent thing and ignore it. Or go buy a turbodiesel. The second setting, ‘Sport’, is the normal one but it’s only you switch the setting to this one, ‘Sport Sharp’, that the power boost becomes neck-snapping.
This car can catapult through a set of twisties with a glorious yowl and incredible agility, aided by an all-wheel drive set-up that distributes torque from front to rear using a viscous coupling and from side to side courtesy of mechanical limited slip differentials. It also helps that the unique flat four boxer design of this car’s 2.5-litre engine keeps the car’s centre of gravity low, sharpening up a driving experience further aided by a slick, short-throw 6-speed gearbox.
All Imprezas now use a five-door hatchback bodyshape that can look pretty anonymous in lesser guises but which is properly macho in this one, mainly thanks to heavily blistered wheel arches. These allow the wheels to be pushed out another 45mm at the front and 40mm at the back, giving the car a pugnacious, foursquare stance. A mesh front grille, fatter wheels, a huge air intake and a prominent tail spoiler also up the ante. Side skirts give the effect of visually lowering the car while a high-mounted spoiler and quad exhaust pipes will leave those who have just been overtaken in little doubt as to what’s just blown by.
Moving inside, the leather and alcantara-trimmed sports seats look inviting, the steering wheel’s good to h
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