Subaru WRX STI review and buyer's guide
WRX STi is such a pure driving experience that only real drivers need apply. It’s a hoot to drive it like you mean it - very satisfying - but hard work for ordinary driving in traffic. Classic performance car paradox...
A replacement STi is not due until 2019, so for 2018 Subaru has done what any self-respecting carmaker will do - there’s a new bumper and grille, plus 19-inch alloys - biggest wheels ever on an STi. Plus Kermit-green brake calipers. Yesss!
Easiest way to train-spot the 2018 STi is: the building-site hi-viz brake calipers. Not so sure that’s a stylistic move forward - but it is certainly distinctive. Check them out below.
Normally these additions would not be enough to motivate me to review a car, but when the very nice girl from Subaru rings and says we’d like to lend you an STi for review for a week, it would be uncharitable to say ‘no’. I mean, chivalry’s not dead, and I would hate to hurt her feelings...
Powertrain performance
The powertrain remains a real hoot - albeit ageing, and albeit out-grunted by some newer entrants.
The peaks are 221kW @ 6000rpm and 407Nm @ 4000. A very healthy step up from non-STI WRXs - but you do have to feed it 98 RON unleaded.
I guess the big story there is the mid-range power delivery - it’s in front of the Volkswagen Golf R there. But not the Focus RS.
When you’re indulging yourself - just keep the tacho between 4000 and 6000 revs - very satisfying.
Value
This one I tested is the base-model STi - and it’s unbelievably affordable given the sheer breadth of capability. You’ll get it on the road for $55 grand here in Australia.
This car is outrageously cheap up front, and hardly ‘poverty’ inside. But the insurance is likely to make your eyes water, and then there’s the servicing - still due every six months, when most of the competition has moved to 12. So you better factor in $700-$800 a year there. And of course, you’ll have to keep jamming super-premium unleaded down its gullet if you know what’s good for you.
Comfort? Huh?
If there’s a class of interior comfort called ‘harsh comfortable’ - this is it. It’s a performance-driving-centric cabin arrangement. And it’s poverty in the back seat. This car is not the place to shop for opulence - and obviously the interior was not where they spent the big bucks in R&D. Instead they had a very serious conference with Isaac Newton.
You can delete the absurd towel rack on the rear deck for $300 - much better for flying under the radar. I’d be doing that - but if you are young and dumb, perhaps not. As a practical matter, it achieves nothing - except of course make you stand out in traffic. Officer, look at me! (Just what you want…) Or, you could cut out the middleman and just put your license in the barbeque…
Badge overload
It’s been a couple of years since I last reviewed an STi - and I note with some relief that Subaru’s badge gluing-on department is still punching well above its weight with this car. No budgets have been cut there.
There are badges on the front and the back, the brakes, the wheels, the mats, the scuff plates, the headrests, the steering wheel, the centre console, and I probably missed a couple...
Counting them is beyond the basic capacity for numeracy required by the motoring journalist’s code of competency. Anyway, the chance of forgetting your car is an STi, from any angle is still minus 273 degrees C …
Driving an STI
I love this car - it’s such a paradox. It’s a burden to drive it in traffic, and it’s not pleasant to take to the shops for the bread, milk and ammo. When you let it off the chain, it’s often more capable than you, and that’s a wholly humbling experience. And if you can drive it like a WRX STi - well, you probably shouldn’t drive like that on a public road.
It’s also a hard car to drive well - so if you’re into the whole ‘driving finesse’ thing - you know: slow is smooth, and smooth is fast - then the WRX STi is a continuous self-improvement challenge. And if you don’t know what that means, I’m pretty sure Toyota still makes the Yaris...
It’s always very traumatic giving back an icon like the STi. It leaves scars. Moving on, though: is the STI right for you? Very hard question to answer. Yet, let us do that, or die like Cletus in the attempt.
Specifications
There are three flavours of STi in the range - poverty, premium and Spec-dot-R.
Poverty, which is a term Subaru does not use, is actually not all that hard to cop. Standard items are cruise control, dual-zone climate air, the full infotainment package, a 5.9-inch centre LCD and eight speaker Harmon Kardon audio. That’s about $51,000 plus on-roads - it’s just a life-support system for the awesome dominatrix driveline, basically.
Premium costs another $5800 - and for that you get a sunroof and you will sit on dead cow - probably more than one - plus the electronic oversight stuff - blind spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic alert, front and side-view monitors … like that. You also get power-adjustable heated seats, auto-dimming rear-view mirror. So, that’s the hard, fast version of incipient luxury. Dominatrix with a velvet glove.
Spec.R adds $1750 - basically you get front Recaros plus 8-way power adjustment for the driver, but here, Dominatrix giveth with one hand and taketh with the other (it’s always the way) because the seat memory function is removed.
Is WRX STI right for you?
This next bit is for you, if you are quivering at the dealership, poised to drop the big bucks on that horizontally opposed, symmetrically all-wheel driven impossible to please mechanical mistress.
The reality is that every drive is a lesson about frustration and insatiability - and make no miscalculation here: you’re the one in the latex gimp suit and it’s you doing the boot licking. (You can tell I’ve thought about this in extensive detail. I live my life below the belt, in a dungeon. You always look at me like that’s a bad thing.)
This is a harsh, draining car to drive. It’s wholly unpleasant in a mundane driving context. I mean, you’re not going to wear the gimp suit down the shops, right? Not unless you want to be on the news.
But it is awesome to have a red-hot go in an STi. You will have a Cheshire cat grin in that gimp suit - and I’d be lying if I said I did not scope exactly the right bend on exactly the right gravel - with loads of vision, plenty of runoff and nothing to hit, crank up the centre diff, have a judicious lift mid corner and then just dial it back straight with the throttle.
Forgive me, father, for I have sinned in this respect - and I would do it again on every day ending in ‘Y’. Commit me to hell if you must. The STi is designed for that stuff.
And for all you social justice warriors who think that’s unacceptable - get back in your friggin’ boxes. Do us all a favour: Hold your breath for five minutes. What’s unacceptable is driving like that in a residential street.
If you do it in the right location, well inside the control envelope, inside the limits of your own ability, it’s no different to a helicopter pilot practising an autorotation - because some day, the turbine’s going to quit for real…
Special thanks
Special thanks go to our good friends at
Auto Experts and
Garage Dreams for offering their views, time and resources.
This one I tested is the base-model STi - and it’s unbelievably affordable given the sheer breadth of capability. You’ll get it on the road for $55 grand here in Australia.
This car is outrageously cheap up front, and hardly ‘poverty’ inside. But the insurance is likely to make your eyes water, and then there’s the servicing - still due every six months, when most of the competition has moved to 12. So you better factor in $700-$800 a year there. And of course, you’ll have to keep jamming super-premium unleaded down its gullet if you know what’s good for you.
If there’s a class of interior comfort called ‘harsh comfortable’ - this is it. It’s a performance-driving-centric cabin arrangement. And it’s poverty in the back seat. This car is not the place to shop for opulence - and obviously the interior was not where they spent the big bucks in R&D. Instead they had a very serious conference with Isaac Newton.
You can delete the absurd towel rack on the rear deck for $300 - much better for flying under the radar. I’d be doing that - but if you are young and dumb, perhaps not. As a practical matter, it achieves nothing - except of course make you stand out in traffic. Officer, look at me! (Just what you want…) Or, you could cut out the middleman and just put your license in the barbeque…
It’s been a couple of years since I last reviewed an STi - and I note with some relief that Subaru’s badge gluing-on department is still punching well above its weight with this car. No budgets have been cut there.
There are badges on the front and the back, the brakes, the wheels, the mats, the scuff plates, the headrests, the steering wheel, the centre console, and I probably missed a couple...
Counting them is beyond the basic capacity for numeracy required by the motoring journalist’s code of competency. Anyway, the chance of forgetting your car is an STi, from any angle is still minus 273 degrees C …
I love this car - it’s such a paradox. It’s a burden to drive it in traffic, and it’s not pleasant to take to the shops for the bread, milk and ammo. When you let it off the chain, it’s often more capable than you, and that’s a wholly humbling experience. And if you can drive it like a WRX STi - well, you probably shouldn’t drive like that on a public road.
It’s also a hard car to drive well - so if you’re into the whole ‘driving finesse’ thing - you know: slow is smooth, and smooth is fast - then the WRX STi is a continuous self-improvement challenge. And if you don’t know what that means, I’m pretty sure Toyota still makes the Yaris...
It’s always very traumatic giving back an icon like the STi. It leaves scars. Moving on, though: is the STI right for you? Very hard question to answer. Yet, let us do that, or die like Cletus in the attempt.
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