The New York Times reviews the Subaru WRX and the Mitsubishi EVO.
“With the performance side of the Impreza and Lancer lines now extending from the 237-horsepower Lancer Ralliart and 224-horse Impreza 2.5 GT on up to the Evo MR and WRX STI, the $25,690 WRX and $33,710 Evo GSR are the middle children. In a lot of ways, they’re the sweet spots of their respectivelineups.
The WRX now offers most of the STI’s thrills for two-thirds of the money, and the 5-speed Evo GSR is quicker than the more expensive MR. With its noncomputerized transmission, the GSR will be easier to modify, an important consideration for the legions of Evo owners who bump up their horsepower.”
AutoExpress reviews the Subaru Impreza WRX Spec C and they’re quite amazed at the car’s handling and performance.
“The car sits on Subaru’s new SI-Drive ‘intelligent’ chassis with the latest mechanical limited-slip differential at the rear. There’s also a revised suspension set-up with new dampers and springs, as well as a thicker rear anti-roll bar.
All this combines with the 18-inch alloys and those sticky tyres to solve the vagueness of the STi’s steering, and turn-in is much more precise as a result.”
“The Spec C is 30kg lighter than the STi, tipping the scales at 1,475kg, so you’d expect it to be fast. But it’s the throttle response that stands out. A new ball-bearing turbo and intercooler waterspray device work together to transform the car’s power delivery.
The latter showers the intercooler constantly to reduce intake temperatures from 70 degrees Celsius to around 40 degrees Celsius. The result is that the engine retains the 25bhp that’s normally lost when it starts to suffer in the heat.”
Car and Driver has a long term road test of the 2008 Subaru WRX STI. It looks like they got a bunch of mechanical issues with the car. The review is pretty extensive and is worth a read.
“The first few months with the STI were smooth sailing. [...] Around the 11,000-mile mark, second gear began repeatedly popping out of its engagement, and into service the STI went.”
“Engine problems cropped up with just 23,000 miles on the clock. [...] An air-fuel-ratio sensor was initially suspected and subsequently replaced, but the new sensor proved no fix. Finally, after months of trying to track down the unhappy ghost in our engine bay, a new engine control unit was installed, curing the problem. [...] It took so long to identify the issue that Subaru asked the dealer to do a compression check on all cylinders, to make sure driving the car with the surging issue hadn’t caused it to go out of spec. As it turned out, the compression was indeed out of whack, so a new short block (which really means most of the engine beyond the cylinder heads) was installed at 32,066 miles.”
“[...] when the car was functioning properly, it was an extremely capable and fun-to-drive machine.”
“The all-wheel-drive system proved fantastic during the winter months and the suspension provides a much more civilized ride than that of the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution.”