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Its firm steering is laser accurate, plenty quick enough and full of feedback to let you know just how hard you can push the Dunlop Sport Maxx tyres. Highway 1 bucks and coils and drops rapidly downhill towards the Pacific in a flurry of gear shifts, throttle and brake jabs and steering inputs. The fun starts a few miles after you’ve turned off the 101. So early one Friday we set off towards Stinson Beach, plotting a route north up the famous Highway 1 a few miles beyond the Golden Gate Bridge, which would then loop right back round and further inland on the Panoramic Highway. Sure, the doors and boot clang emptily when you shut them, and this is a very easy car to stall when you combine first gear with steering lock, but the STI feels as usable on the daily grind as it does exciting and characterful. It was a surprisingly enjoyable car to use around Berkeley, California, even at slow speed: that burbly flat-four turbo engine, the surprisingly meaty hydraulically assisted steering, and the closely stacked gears, all of it gelled to deliver that unmistakeable Subaru DNA. No sat-nav either, so I would require a map-reading navigator, perhaps apt given Subaru’s rallying pedigree. Our car was finished in Pure Red (it was, to be fair, very red), with a $35,490 sticker (around £28.5k, which is now similar to the British price thanks to the recent drop in the British pound) and no optional equipment.
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When Ken Block first powerslid onto YouTube, he was at the wheel of a WRX, and today Subaru is active in Global Rallycross and national rally championships: Manxman David Higgins has clinched this year’s Rally America National Championship, and even his brother Mark's production-car lap records of the Isle of Man are set-up by Subaru USA.Ī trip over some epic roads north of San Francisco seemed a good chance to revaluate the WRX STI in what is now its most enthusiastic market. The rally championships that built the brand seem about as relevant to modern-day Subaru as they are to Audi.Īmerica has been far more proactive in squirting fuel on Subaru’s motorsport fire. Today, in the UK, it’s easy to dismiss the WRX STI (no Impreza these days, and no WRX for us) as a curiosity in a line-up dominated by SUVs and crossovers.