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Do you like your cars analogue or digital? With an inherently low CG and body weight or with a lot of technology to compensate for a high CG and a more portly whole?

As Peter Tomalin points out in this month’s evo...

Yes it still rolls a bit, certainly more than an Evo, which also has sharper steering responses, but there’s an honesty and transparency to the STI, a kind of analogue feel, that’s very appealing.

I’m not arguing for one over the other, I’m arguing against anyone who obsesses over numbers and spec sheets when buying cars.

From my post dated May 13th, 2008:

It’s just that when something’s called a WRX it should mean something other than ‘flat-4 turbocharged’. Perhaps we’d all like the car better if the name were Impreza. (Come to think of it, the car makes the most sense as an Outback Sport – you can forgive a squishy suspension in something that is labeled Outback).

From a fantastic write-up (I’d suggest you all read) on the new Impreza by evo’s Peter Tomalin, dated July 2008:

Problem is, the WRX badge brings with it a lot of expectations that this Impreza can’t quite fulfil. Which isn’t the same as saying it’s a bad car. It’s just not quite the car you might have been hoping it was. If they’d called it a ‘Sport’ or a ‘GX’ or something, we’d have given it a much easier time.

-3.0L flat six is expected to be phased out.

-remaining engines will employ a new alloy block to help reduce weight

-the longer stoke design employed in the new Tribeca will be used across the lineup for improved torque

If you read the mainstream U.S. magazines, you’re probably of the opinion that the new EVO is better than/faster than the STI. But there’s something troubling about the weight gain and the packaging and something even more disconcerting about the new platform that places you much higher off the ground, not to mention shares its roots with a Caliber.

Problem is, most U.S. magazines get so hellbent on numbers and trick technology that they don’t remember to steward the essentials: subjective accomplishment, involvement.

Thank goodness the British magazines aren’t similarly afflicted… Here’s a quote from evo

You always feel like you’re sitting slightly higher and more upright in an Evo… Somewhere inside the Evo X is the brilliantly pointy, adjustable chassis that has been improving for nine generations. But Mitsubishi has tried to civilize the tenth gen and it’s missed the mark. The steering is more direct than the Impreza’s and therefore initially nicer, but you very soon realise that it has no real feel. For a car that you want to drive on its nose this is not good, because you just don’t have the confidence to throw it into corners. It feels up on tiptoes and it’s more instantly sensitive and adjustable than the STI but you can’t enjoy it because you feel like you’re controlling what’s going on underneath you by remote. It really is like playing a computer game. The engine is disappointing too, feeling very thin in its delivery and lacking in grunt compared with the STI. It is also possibly the dullest sounding engine ever to drone from a performance car – it’s like listening to someone Hoovering a couple of rooms away. The gearing is very short, which is fine when you can flick up and down the box so easily, but as Roger Green says, there’s a permanent flurry of activity going on yet somehow you’re never quite in the right gear. The best solution is to leave it in Drive and let the spookily intuitive computer program shuffle cogs for you. Not something I ever thought I’d say about an Evo. The Evo X SST is still a very quick car across the ground, its ability to carry speed is phenomenal and there are moments when you catch glimpses of why we love Evos, but they’re fleeting thanks to the layer of desensitising civility Mitsubishi has added in. A car like the Evo is not, should not, be a mainstream car. Jumping back into the Impreza as the sun sinks, it’s clear the STI wins this battle. It’s more engaging to drive, the engine feels much stronger and there’s simply more of what you want, what you expect, from a thrilling rally-stage refugee. When you add in the price difference too, it’s a clear winner.

Another thing you’ve probably heard about is likely to be the new STI’s incessant, stubborn understeer. Like I’ve said before, this is a red flag that the reviewer is employing a textbook driving technique rather than learning the nuances of a car. Just as the new EVO/BMW X6, Acura TL, BMW M3 want you to squeeze down on the throttle at the moment understeer wants to rear its head, the Impreza favors a different driving style which is, not surprisingly, the way rally cars are driven. As Henry Catchpole describes in the same article:

The steering is nicely weighted, but it’s curiously indistinct around the dead ahead. There’s a certain amount of roll as you turn into a corner too, so there’s a moment before you really feel the chassis start to bite and the steering start to feed back. If you’re timid or just ambling along, then the Subaru can seem slightly reluctant. What you need to do is be bold; turn in hard and, once into the meat of the steering, you’ll feel the front Dunlops grip and possibly scrub a little into understeer if you’re carrying good speed. As soon as you’re into the corner you should be thinking about getting back on the power. With 300lb ft you’re not short of urge whichever gear you’re in, so it’s just a case of how you deploy it. The slightly slow-acting viscous coupling of the central diff works best if you progressively squeeze the throttle to the carpet rather than just jumping on it. This way you’ll feel the tail move round before the front pulls you out of the corner in one smooth flow. There is of course another way to approach a corner, which is to trail-brake as you turn in. The brakes make a slightly odd sound (like a huge computer powering down) but with the weight over the front axle the steering weights up instantly and the rear swings round nicely as you turn in…

Of course, you’ll never experience this on a test drive and probably won’t have the guts (or permission) to experience it on the road or track, but it’s nice to know that there’s something we know that most others don’t and that the STI holds something to experience as your familiarity with the car deepens. Sounds like the kind of stuff that makes Porsche 911 drivers snicker when people say 911’s are fundamentally flawed, the depth of character that let’s some cars dig deep beneath your skin while others just tickle you which is no surprise when you consider Subaru has always fancied itself as the Japanese equivalent to Porsche (whereas Toyota’s like Mercedes and Honda like BMW).

When a manufacturers lets their marketers tell the engineers what to do, the outcome stands to go poorly. This is especially true in an engineering led company with a unique vehicle genome like Subaru…

This quote echoes what most who are familiar with what made the WRX an icon are saying:

What I’m really hoping for is a driving experience that takes all the great bits of the old WRX – the beautifully judged ride/handling balance, the torque-laden, uniquely characterful engine – and builds on them. Within 500 yards of my first drive home, that hope is seriously dented. When I turn in to the first corner the nose feels soft and slow to react. When it does start to tuck in, there’s virtually no feel from the road, no sense of connection between steering rack and tyres and tarmac. Several weeks on, I’m still feeling underwhelmed by the WRX’s chassis. The ride’s consistently terrific, and traction out of corners is great whether the tarmac’s dry, damp or streaming wet. But the dearth of feedback, exaggerated roll and predisposition to understeer are a disappointment. – Peter Tomalin, evo

I wanted to like this Impreza… I’m a fan of 5 doors about this size and was relived to see Subaru had kept the car from gaining weight as it gained size. Even the move towards less lag and more torqe makes sense for all but those who will mod the engine anyway.

All the last gen of Impreza needed was a nicer interior and more room – the rear suspension should have helped with the later and given how little they spent on a new powertrain you’d think the interior could have been brought to the level of the current Legacy.

Yes, it now rides with the aplomb of E46 Xi but with a chintzy interior and a fair amount of wind and road noise that comes across as a bit of an anomaly.

Not that the Impreza is a bad car – in its class only the Rabbit and the Mazda 3 trump it dynamically. It’s just that when something’s called a WRX it should mean something other than ‘flat-4 turbocharged’. Perhaps we’d all like the car better if the name were Impreza. (Come to think of it, the car makes the most sense as an Outback Sport – you can forgive a squishy suspension in something that is labeled Outback).

In this piece on the new TT (worth a read in its own right) one of my favorite new journalists explains the differences between three kinds of cars. So next time someone says one car is ‘better’ than another, ask them to clarify which kind of car they gravitate towards…

The Driver’s Car – It’s hard to explain unless you’ve driven one, but there are cars in this world that are just as fun to drive at 15 mph through a school zone as they are to blast down back roads. They are cars like the first-generation Mazda Miata, the original VW GTI, and the BMW E30 M3. They are cars that read the road surface to your fingertips with all the subtlety of a megaphone, that demand all of your attention all of the time. They don’t necessarily need to be that capable (and by modern standards, those that I’ve mentioned aren’t); they just need to be communicative and involving.

The Atari Car – Cars to which I refer as “Atari Cars” are a modern phenomenon. They are cars that feel like a video game. Atari Cars are immensely capable – they can often out-perform supercars without even breaking a sweat. And that lack of sweat defines them – they shrug off insane speeds and laugh at corners. Nothing unsettles their suspension. They’re so good that the driver has no idea how fast he’s actually driving. These are cars like Audi’s very own RS4, a Mercedes E63 AMG, Bentley Continental GT, and, to a lesser extent, cars like the Subaru WRX STi.

The Sports Car – A sports car (in the World According to Me) is that rare car that combines the communication of a Driver’s Car with the capability of an Atari Car. The quintessential sports car that comes to mind is the Porsche 911. It, like other sports cars (the Ferrari F430 and Lotus Elise come to mind), is among the world’s most capable machines, and yet remains so communicative and interactive that its owners take the long way to the grocery store.

here’s where it gets interesting. The flat-six engine (or H6, as Subaru calls it) is already a tight fit in the Tribeca’s engine bay. Since the H6 is a horizontally opposed layout, any significant increase in crankshaft stroke would result in engine-block deck-height increases that would make the engine too wide to fit in the existing structure. The problem was exacerbated by typically thrifty computer-aided engine design, which left minimal space between the engine’s cylinder bores. Subaru calculated that it could safely increase the bore size from 89.2mm to 92.0mm, but that change would have bumped the displacement to only 3191cc. Subaru needed more than that for the performance improvements it was seeking, so it came up with a novel way of increasing piston stroke without raising the cylinder deck height. The answer was an asymmetrical connecting-rod design (which looks somewhat like a lamb chop) that permits the piston to travel farther downward into the crankcase and increases the effective stroke from 80mm to 91mm. Increasing both bore and stroke has resulted in a 3.6-liter engine, a growth of 0.6 liter, with substantial gains in power and torque. The new engine produces 256 horsepower at 6000 rpm versus 250 at 6600 in the previous engine. But torque now peaks at 247 pound-feet at 4400 rpm versus 219 at 4200, and about 180 pound-feet are now available at engine speeds as low as 1200 rpm… During the engineering redesign process—which pared about 10 pounds off the engine’s weight—Subaru altered the cooling system from one where cylinders receive the coolant flow sequentially to one where separate ducts provide each cylinder with its own fresh supply. This more-equal cooling strategy allowed the engineers to advance the spark timing by one degree, yielding six pound-feet of torque in the process. The overall improvement in torque delivery permitted revisions to the transmission torque converter and shifting strategies, greatly reducing the amount of hunting and downshifting that is considered annoying by current Tribeca owners…. The larger motor is quite prolific, with increased torque all through the rev range, making squirting through the mountains south of Palm Springs, California, a brisk affair. – Car and Driver

The Legacy has been around for years but buyers have rarely paid it much attention. That should change with this model… handling is exceptional. It corners with composure and gives the driver plenty of confidence thanks to high reserves of grip; what’s more, it adopts the same neutral attitude no matter how slippery the road surface. Yet such prowess does not come either at the expense of ride quality, which is smooth… [The engine] may lack a little low-down pull but [is] punchy and silky smooth at high-revs, was well as sounding ‘expensive’... Overall, the new Legacy deserves a closer look, particularly as pricing matches [fleet car] models and seriously undercuts the BMW 3 Series it is, in many ways, more than a match for. – AutoExpress

Note: the only 3 things keeping this car from greatness are 1) a 4 speed auto in 2.5i models, 2) the lack of stability control on anything but the SpecB model and 3) that the ‘07 models body’s been weakened by the inclusion of standard folding rear seats. (That’s something the engineers did away with in 2000 for safety, refinement and performance reasons – apparently the marketers insisted that’s less important than the easy sell.)

You’ve likely seen the rumours about the next Impreza, for example that it will be a five door hatch only, that it will adopt a multillink rear suspension, etc. But the one sentence that has me most concerned was one I saw on Autoexpress’ site:

engineers have worked to keep prices down.

Very rarely has that resulted in a better car for the consumer. Stay tuned.

People tend to overcomplicate cars – in the end most of what’s true is true because you can’t break the laws of physics.

Case in point: BMW and Subaru SUVs handle better because the engineers insist on a low engine placement (the Porsche Cayenne has a high mounted engine so has to resort to a complicated suspension to regain lost ground). And the Jaguar XK rides handles and accelerates better than competitors because it is 400 lbs lighter than the Mercedes SL 550 and 500 lbs lighter than BMW 6-Series.

Maybe marketers and designers should be required to take high school physics.