IMPREZA IMPRESSIONS

Our road testers have driven countless Subarus over the years, but which left the biggest marks?

Richard Meaden: Impreza Turbo 2000 AWD

Ask me my most memorable Subaru moment during my time at evo and I’d say driving the Impreza P1 in north Wales alongside a Ferrari 550 as the final to our Greatest Driver’s Cars feature (issue 066). However, it was my very first drive in the then brand-new Impreza Turbo 2000 AWD back in 1994 that really sticks in my mind.

I was a greenhorn road tester at Carweek, the long-defunct weekly offshoot of Car magazine, and was tasked with writing the first drive on the Impreza Turbo (above left). Nobody on the mag seemed that bothered about the cheap and cheerful Subaru, but I totally fell in love with it.

I haven’t driven an early Impreza Turbo for at least a decade, but I’m pretty sure the things I loved about it back in ’94 – namely the characterful engine, unpretentious image and brilliant point-to-point performance – would feel even more appealing today. The more powerful special editions grab the limelight, but for me the plain and simple Turbo remains the seminal Subaru.

James Taylor: Impreza WRX STI Version IV

It was the summer holidays, I was ten years old, we were visiting family friends in Wales, and their friend popped round in a new car: a silver Subaru Impreza WRX STI Version IV (top left). Gold wheels, foglight covers, that one-piece arc rear wing. I was captivated.

All the more so when its owner took my dad and me for a passenger ride. I remember the odd, offbeat growling sound the engine made, the acceleration that went with it and, above all, the sheer grip. I couldn’t believe a car could go, stop and corner so hard. Nor the way it apparently turned back into what felt, from the passenger seat at least, like an ordinary saloon car when we slinked back into the village. I didn’t know a car could have that kind of Jekyll and Hyde character. I’ve wanted one ever since. Still do.

John Barker: Impreza RB5

For me, peak Impreza was the RB5 (above right). Sure, the 22B was exotic, being a three-door JDM, but current prices are astonishing. I always liked the everyman feel and affordability of the four-door and how, out of the box, it felt tailor-made for our gnarly roads. Of course, the Prodrive P1 was finely tuned for UK roads, but I simply prefer the saloon’s under-the-radar looks.

I recall one particular RB5 very fondly. It was a press car that appeared in these pages a couple of times – T47 JOP. It was my ideal spec: subtle colour, short shift and added PPP – Prodrive Performance Pack – that tickled the power up from 215 to 237bhp, which was just enough to make it endlessly entertaining, to give its lithe, beautifully supple and enthralling chassis more to play with. How good? Third on ecoty 1999, behind 911 GT3 and 360 Modena. Where are you now T47 JOP? According to the DVLA your MOT expired in 2019. I really hope you’re getting the restoration you deserve.

Stuart Gallagher: Impreza Turbo 2000 AWD

It has to be the RB5, doesn’t it? That pre-dawn dash across Europe, the rendezvous with a then new Audi S3, the thrash back across Europe to be home in time for the pub. The gaffer tape holding the rear wing down and the French customs officer who took an immediate dislike to the haircuts Gus Gregory and I were sporting. Actually, no. It’s not the RB5. Not this time.

Before that 20-hour day there was the first Impreza moment. The one that planted the seed. The first time I experienced those light-touch but feel-filled controls. The rubbery gearchange that still managed to be precise thanks to its intuitive gate. The way the body lean encouraged you to push harder; the way it felt up on its toes, deft and agile, responsive and surefooted. That first-ever drive of an Impreza Turbo in the late summer of 1998 will never be forgotten. A seminal car for me and this magazine.