Green credentials for WRX STi
Cleaner engine, bigger brighter brakes - but Subaru’s performance flagship is still old-school, says David Linklater.
Subaru New Zealand managing director Wallis Dumper calls the WRX STi the ‘‘last bastion of the manual gearbox’’.
It’s not the last three-pedal Subaru standing, of course: the more mainstream WRX is still available with a manual transmission, although it’s seldom sold with one. Would have been unthinkable a decade ago, but WRX drivers now prefer automatic. Of the continuously variable kind (or SLT as this carmaker calls it) no less.
But the WRX STi remains manual-only, even in its just-updated form. In fact, it’s the last bastion of quite a lot of things.
The WRX range has long since stopped wearing an ‘‘Impreza’’ badge, but as we all know it’s still based on the platform of Subaru’s small-car. It’s just that this particular iteration is no longer on the latest version. The current Impreza and its XV paternal twin are now built on the all-new Subaru Global Platform, whereas the WRX/STi are still riding on the old architecture.
If you favour a bit of old-school Subaru boxer burble, the STi is still the place to go. It’s quite restrained, but you definitely get a sense of that thrum that we all used to know and love. The thrum that’s long been banished from the rest of the range, which is now rather grown-up.
There’s also a clear link to the lag-and-launch character of turbo cars from years gone by. There’s a definite lull in proceedings below 3000rpm, but then the 2.5-litre boxer-turbo comes on boost and things get fast and furious very quickly.
The STi is not a particularly easy car to drive smoothly and/or quickly. It’s hard to get off the line, the gearbox can feel notchy unless you take a very firm hand with it and the vast amount of mechanical grip and AWD traction requires a certain slow-in, explode-out cornering technique.
You don’t get what is perhaps Subaru’s greatest technology asset, the EyeSight twin-camera active safety system. It’s just been added to the standard WRX (it’s already on Impreza), but it’s not compatible with manualtransmission models. Which is the only type of STi model.
It’s exhausting just talking about it. I might have put you off at this point. Or you might be quite excited to know that the new STi is still old-school and over-the-top.
The STi isn’t entirely stuck in 1995. The Premium model now has steering-adaptive headlights with daytime running lights, a Front View Monitor, which will stop you scraping the new-design bumper when you’re parking, and a 10-way-adjustable power driver’s seat.
The STi engine meets Euro 6b emissions regulations and there’s a new brake package with 340mm-front Brembos and 326mm cross-drilled rotors on the rear. Bright yellow calipers are standard - and perhaps the easiest way to identify the revised model.
There have been minor changes to the suspension and the Driver Controlled Centre Differential (DCCD) now allows more precise control of how the AWD system distributes its torque. You still get the SI-Drive control that gives the choice of three modes for the powertrain.
It’s still a hard-core performance vehicle, no question. The hard ride tells you that. So while it’s possible to trundle around town in the STi, leaving the car in Intelligent mode (equivalent to ‘‘comfort’’ in non-Subarus) and trying your best to keep the engine on the boil without going boost-tastic, that’s not really what it’s designed for.
The WRX automatic certainly is, while still looking the part and being respectably quick (albeit 1.4sec slower to 100kmh). So if it’s a day-to-day Rex you want, that’s probably the one.
If you want to go real fast ,be completely involved and occasionally wrestle with an anime monster, the STi is your car. This is still a serious machine for serious people, more than capable of demolishing a Kiwi backroad or eating up a track day.
The old-fashioned feel is all part of the appeal, right? So is the cartoonish quality of the acceleration and grip when you really wind things up. It really takes you by surprise at times.
Once upon a time, the STi was the ultimate in small-car performance and handling, you could spend all day arguing about whether a fast-four was really better than Aussie V8 muscle.
Well, the Aussie muscle era is over and there are any number of hot hatches on the market that are just as fast and powerful as the STi - while being dynamically more sophisticated and much easier to drive quickly. Not to mention much posher inside; the WRX’s interior was never that flash and it’s not aging gracefully.
Where does that leave the STi? As a nod back to a time when you had to be totally committed to your driving to get the most out of a high-performance turbocharged car. That was a good time. Still love the STi.