Gadgetory

WRX STI perhaps the most technically specialized car in the world under 40 grams now heavily revised for 2015 let's drive this newest formula of the average Joes rally car and check the tip now spotting an STI are you kidding that's the easiest thing an auto dumb this look at the back where you've got that wing big enough to drive a BRZ beyond that is back to being a four-door sedan only in classic WRX historical roots I think it's the best-looking most cohesive one since the original it comes still partial - they have thinned out and more rakish Lee extended these eight pillars and this wide-body design is much more elegantly done than the outgoing car it's got a cohesive look as if it was meant to look this early not a base in presence that was bumped out to be that bird and note this led low beam headlights are standard on this car kind of a nice touch now the cabin of the new WRX STI is very gutsy these carbon fiber trims and I'm gonna go through a bunch of drive controls in a minute let's start with the head unit though which base is pretty basic stuff I mean that's a dot matrix display no navigation and your basic media sources they're all there but there's nothing that's gonna be i popping I never look to Subaru to wow me in the head unit this is no exception now you can't upgrade this however to a six inch touchscreen navigation system that will also include voice command we don't have that here so I can't comment on it you can also bump up to a Harman Kardon audio system which I would recommend because the sound system in here is one of the few I noticed in the cars that I Drive because it's kind of cardboard sounding all the time no matter what I did with the tone controls I couldn't coax what I thought was a good sound out of it now luckily you've got this helper display standard it's small it's far but it's doing a good job with many things like media display for example it'll also take you into your various fuel economy and advanced trip odometers you've got some real-time fuel economy that shows you what the drive trains doing in terms of steer angle and torque distribution and you've got a virtual boost gauge for the turbo that's a nice complement both stylistically and functionally honey which is all analog gauges with a small LCD helper and that same little screen also displays your standard rear camera I'm pleased that it's there I'm pleased that it's standard but it's rather far and rather small to be as effective as I like it I'm corporate with an STI B without its famous intercooled flat for a boxer flat for the Subaru tradition you know it's in our cold because there's the intercooler nestled where the functional front hood scoop will sit right over it now the dimensions on this guy two and a half liter flat four again you've got two cylinders punching this way and two punching that way it's kind of like part of a 911 engine put in here the numbers of 305 horsepower of that configuration 290 foot-pounds of torque lofty numbers from a pretty compact engine again thanks to the intercooled turbo charging which maxes out near 15 psi of boost zero to 60 for a car that weighs about 3400 pounds happens in the low fives possibly better let's call it 5.2 to be conservative what did I bring 17 23 mpg not great for a compact car but this cars done a special mission and of course these guys are all all-wheel drive symmetrical all-wheel drive which is Subarus brand symmetrical all-wheel drive puts the engine right in the middle of the drivetrain literally instead of using a lot of added auxilary shafts and power take-off gearboxes to reroute the torque around the car it's always on designed to be all-wheel drive from the ground up and another benefit of this whole architecture is that it all sits down flat and low great for center of gravity and goes only through a six-speed manual gearbox of course now translating what's in the engine bay goes through a variety of controls primarily here in the center console first of all you got your intelligent drive controller here push it once to go into an automatic mode kick it to the left or counterclockwise you go into a sport mode or go to the right clockwise and you what's called sport sharp and those curves on the display there give you the main gist of it it's sharpening up the tip-in and the ramp up of acceleration under your right foot it's primarily a throttle control contour now all that power in the front gets translated through not one not two but three differentials in all WRX STI s front rear and a very complex electromechanical Center differential and that's controlled right here by this center differential control if you put it in automatic you can make a little bit of change to an automatic plus automatic minus plus is going to handle slushy slippery surfaces better- is gonna be a little more locked for gutsy performance or go all the way into manual and you call the level from most negotiation of difficult surfaces all the way to locked from the highest performance on the tarmac an STI is a base 4159 torque split but if you work your center differential right you can get to just about 50/50 that's kind of your range of where the power is going nominal there are also three stability control profiles normal traction and off and those are in order of sportiness off by the way also turns off torque vectoring so you're handling everything yourself I've never driven the cars that I can recall because the throttle is so responsive to a little blip when you need to do a Rev match it is like that spot on super cool next thing you hear is that great exhaust these sti's have a great exhaust system which is good because i'm not really a big fan of the sound of a boxer engine the next thing i noticed is this car actually feels the best way i can describe it is it feels square which is a big compliment it can go any direction that i wanted to without any sort of prejudice toward its longitudinal length most cars kind of want to go the long way this car will go wherever you put it it's incredibly agile there's a reason that SDI's have this legendary following they're very balanced they're very agile they have those rally routes and that's where all that comes from these are not overpowering cars but they're exceptionally able to get where you want to go with precision oh by the way the steering on this car is in the old school simple hydraulic assist there doing nothing tricky with electric assist on the steering rack whatsoever and by the power delivery is real nice they've dialed out a big piece of any turbo lag in this car the only area high notice it is down real low if you go to stab it you gotta wait for things to get up to 2000 2500 rpm I feel to really get the sweet spot the clutch transactions are great the gearbox is a little notchy but I suspect I mean our cars only got 2,700 miles on it I bet it'll smooth out of it with where I'm not a huge fan of the cabin power in an hour out it's a little bit dated and kind of tacky looking I think oh it really shines boys this car feels not so much the way it looks now pricing the new STI is a pretty simple affair you got to buy one car and add it to one option package and off to the finance managers desk 35 3 is your base for this car and again there's no transmission choice and almost nothing else to pick from until you get to the navigation and Harman Carman audio package for 2500 bucks I think it's a good value even though I haven't had my hands on the nav rig because it includes not only that but 440 watts of Harman Kardon audio support for aha music audio book and radio station streaming keyless access and a very appropriate push button start as well