The 3 Faces of Impreza

First, the bad news: With the effects of the financial crisis beginning to be felt in this country, business (possibly yours) might not be looking too good in 2009. Now the good news: if you’re still in the market to buy a car, the dealer will be only too happy to give you a good deal so you can get his inventory moving. Which brings us to Subaru, care of Motor Image Pilipinas. Proudly a niche player, somewhere in between mainstream and high-end, the brand caters to driving enthusiasts who appreciate the merits of all-wheel drive, horizontally opposed engines, and, ah... distinctive styling. Within its modest lineup, the Impreza has the widest appeal. In vanilla trim it’s a mild-mannered everyday driver with a touch of sportiness. In STI form, it’s a sports car with Porsche-eating performance. And so, before Christmas Day rolled along, we were fortunate enough to get seat time in all three variants of the Impreza. Any variant makes for a pretty good stocking stuffer, if you ask us.

R Sport

Get this model if 95% of your driving involves the commute to work, to the grocery, and semi-annual road trips with the family. With a sticker playing around the P1M mark, it has available manual and automatic transmissions to go with the 2-liter, 150 PS flat-four. Just like the Mitsubishi Lancer, Mazda3, Honda Civic, and Ford Focus, right? Except the Impreza comes with the de rigeur Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive. You might think the hardware is superfluous in a country where it never snows and most of the driving surface is tarmac, but you’d be wrong. The all-wheel drive seamlessly puts the power down to all four wheels to give it a securely planted feel at all times. In a drag race, the R Sport does feel overweight compared to the its competition, but bring it to a set of curves or hills and the all-wheel drive gives gratifying ROI. While the other front-wheel drive competitors are pushing wide in the corners from understeer, the R Sport’s AWD combined with the 50-series 17-inch rubber provide a tenacious grip that’s just more confidence inspiring. Of course, if you really just want an everyday driver with a touch of style, the R Sport has a lot going for it: real character, nice bucket seats, a distinctive and functional hatchback look, a supple suspension, great steering feel, and all the usual modcons for the class like onboard computer and HID lamps.

WRX

This is for the driver who will split equal parts commuting with enthusiastic motoring. The slightly detuned sibling of the bad boy STI, the WRX has a 230 PS turbocharged flat-four engine (although the ’09 model in the US market now has 250), a manual-only transmission (an automatic is not available here), and a livable suspension. Compared to the ’07 WRX, the ’08 has a positively comfortable ride; and that’s saying a lot for a pseudo-sports car. Here we have a rally-inspired hatch that’s been softened and civilized enough to make it enjoyable on a daily basis even in urban gridlock. The WRX is like the high school bully who grew up and turned into a teddy bear. From inside, there’s barely anything to indicate that this is a car with serious performance under the hood. The cabin is just as accommodating as the “entry-level” R Sport, with the usual cupholders and armrests etc. You can ferry your mother-in-law with a WRX and she’d be none the wiser. Come to terms with the slightly stiff clutch, firm brakes, and supple suspension and you’ve got a car you can use everyday and still enjoy on those energetic Sunday club drives. Despite the hot rod looks, it’s quite easy to drive smoothly (if not invisibly), but put the power down in the straights or in the hills and you can shame every other car at or even slightly above its price class.

WRX STI

We’re still suffering withdrawal symptoms. Proclaimed as the 2008 Car of the Year, the WRX STI has a nominal output of 300 PS from its turbocharged flat-four. We say “nominal” because there’s this agreement among Japanese brands to keep the official numbers of their cars at 300. Along with the high-output motor, the STI gets steroid-inflated fenders, a close-ratio 6-speed gearbox, 40-series 18-inch tires, bigger brakes, and more electrickery to keep you from wrapping it around a lightpole.

The STI features three settings for throttle response (Intelligent, Sport, and Sport Sharp), and six settings for its center differential so you can limit the amount of torque going to the front axle (or it could be the rear, the manual lost me after several pages...). Here is what it feels like to drive: In the city, not much fun. The clutch is heavy, and a pussyfoot will stall the engine below 1,200 rpm. It happened to me three times. In stop-and-go, the drivetrain is balky, jerking your head back and forth even with the throttle set on “Intelligent”. On the highway, things get better. There’s ample torque to overtake dawdlers, and plop it in 6th gear at 80kph and you’ll get nearly 8 kpl. Don’t let the incredibly sexy twin tailpipes fool you. Even at full throttle, it’s fairly quiet inside with the sewing machine precision of the flat-four dominating the sound effects.

On the OPEN highway, things turn absolutely fabulous. Set the throttle to Sport Sharp, floor the gas, and you will be way past the speed limit in a few seconds. Here is a car that lets you cruise at 180kph as if you were doing 120 in a lesser car (thank you, all-wheel drive). Things will only get hairy above 200kph, not so much because of any instability (there isn’t much), but because you’ll be scaring yourself already. At any speed, the steering is alive in feedback, and effort is always just right. You just feel connected to the road with the STI, and that makes you go even faster. At 220kph, the STI zips past dawdlers like an F-14 on afterburners. Now I understand why sports car owners have to drive so fast; it’s the only way to enjoy their rides. We hit 230kph as indicated on the speedo before we chickened out. At the Subic International Raceway, we also did several fast laps that the STI just gobbled up. The drivetrain has amazing responsiveness, letting you accelerate out of corners like a hero, while the suspension is at home on less-than-immaculate tarmac. At the cornering limit (with the center diff on automatic), the nose gently pushes in protective understeer so you can back off, get the car back in line, then zoom off again. It will take a highly experienced driver to safely drive the STI to the very edge of its performance envelope, but for enthusiasts who just want the best bang for their buck, a car they can drive at 9/10ths pace without fear of disaster, the STI is IT.