2001 Subaru Impreza

I am not very supportive of Japanese sports cars. They get blown away by anything within their price range, and the ones that can blow away anything cost an insane amount of money. Bash me with NR's and comments, but truth is the truth and I am not going to lie for high ratings (nor will I respond to any bashings, as you will see in my comments window). There are a few jewels among the crowd, but the good models don't even reach the US shores. Nissan Skyline and the Turbo Imprezza are examples to this, with the later one finally finding its way to the US dealers.

I was quite excited about this new arrival, as I have always liked the Imprezza. Nope, not because of that blonde australian guy and his retarded commercials. Imprezza chasis is very well known for its accomplishments in the World Rally Cup. In fact, the previous generation WRX is the car that won this Cup several times. As a result of my interest, I did some research on the new car and managed to take a peak at a few. Nope, I haven't driven it, so if you want to NR me for that as well, feel free to do so. I am just here expressing my opinion on a product I know a thing or two about.

As upsetting as it is, I am only slightly impressed with the US model Imprezza. Even with the turbo on its 2 liter engine (its a horizontally opposed 4 banger) the car boasts 227HP, which is a good number on a 4-door that costs less then 30k. Its higher than other sporty 4-doors like Maxima which boasts 222HP and the Accord with its 200HP engine. And talk about the fuel efficiency of force feeding air to a 2.0 liter with a turbo charger (20mpg city / 27mpg highway) This is a good number, but the Japanese version of the same car punches more HP and this is the reason why I am not overly impressed by the performance. Reasons for the HP reduction on the US version? I can't think of any, unless Subaru was deluded into believing that we just don't care. Anyhow, looking deeper into the specs, I found that the car weights about 3k of lbs. The torque is a bit low for so much HP -- a decent 217ft/lbs at 4k RPM. Given the fact that its a 4WD, straight line acceleration is not overly impressive on the WRX, but that doesn't mean its bad either. I saw 0-60 acceleration reported to be 6.1 seconds, but who knows what some other magazine is going to post. Just looking at the specs and considering the weight, torque and the HP, it is guessable that the car will push 60 in over or around 6 secs. Really good for a 4 door, but not overly impressive.

Imprezza is a 4WD, and I have driven older models with a similar chasis. These cars are a breeze to dance around the curves with. I don't know the specifics about the AWD on this model, however I have driven other Imprezzas and I can't imagine it to be any different. The Imprezza chasis is perfectly balanced, and the power is electronically distributed 50/50 unless slippage occurs. In case of slippage, the power gets shifted to wheels that have a better grip. What does this mean? You almost never, ever spin out even while driving on snow. However, the manual Imprezza has an all time AWD with a coupling center differential. I'd like to cut this short, so I will just say that I doubt you are fast enough to get this car to oversteer or understeer unless you are driving on crystal ice.

Last but not least, we need to consider the looks. The Japanese Imprezza has the traditional rally style look, with a box shape and angular curves. They made some dramatic changes to the new version with different headlights and other minor differences. I don't know how else to put this, so I will put it the only way I can -- the WRX is as ugly as a dead moose's butt. The front headlights are too big, way too exaggurated. The car looks to thin to have headlights that big and round. The traditional hood scoop hardly helps this grinning problem. Yes, you heard it correctly -- the car looks like a big smiley face. The back has two cuts on both sides on the trunk, serving no aerodynamic or visual purpose. Perhaps a huge aero wing could hide it, but than it would look like you are a kid in a rice racer. Why screw up a perfectly good car? Feh.

(Note from the author: You know, I find it hillarious that among all the idiotic tricks I played to make people join Epinions, none has worked as well as bashing a car. You will notice that most people that left me comments joined for that purpose. I think this is really funny.)