The story of Subaru Impreza WRX

The story of Subaru Impreza WRX

It was in 1992 that the Subaru company introduced the Subaru Impreza. The models at the time was a hatchback and a four door sedan. The Impreza was good-looking, spacious, safe and was great as a family car. After that, Subaru took a bold step to upgrade this family oriented car to a powerful performance based racing magnet with a 2.0litre turbo engine and 2.5-liter boxer engine and named them – Impreza WRX and Impreza WRX STI. The letters WRX were the abbreviation for World Rally eXperimental, and STI stands for Subaru Tecnica International.

When it all began! The first ever WRX that was manufactured in 1992 was a model that could be driven on the road, which went on to win several World Racing Car championships. This car came packed with various rally technologies such as bucket seats, viscous coupling, all wheel drive and stiffened suspensions. Two years later, Subaru introduced the WRX STI out with an even more upgraded suspension and engine. The STI saw even more durable upgrades than WRX, which resulted in the car winning the manufacturer’s championship in 1996.

Then came the WRX STI In the millennium Subaru launched their second generation WRX STI, and it was nicknamed ‘bug eye’. This version was actually not well received and had several negative reviews due to its headlights’ shape. Subaru made two revisions to the headlights after that one was called the blob eye and finally settled for hawk-eye, which had a better response than the first two models. Even though the car’s appearance was not well received, it was one of the most powerful cars in terms of performance.

The second hatchback model The third-generation WRX STI was released in 2007. This time it was a hatchback, and the body was bigger than the previous models. However, the engineers managed to keep it at the same weight as the earlier models. The engine capacity remained the same 2.5 liters. This model only came out as a hatchback and a sedan style was never introduced.

Fourth generation WRX The fourth-generation WRX was unveiled in 2015 and it came out in Sedan style. This car carried a 2.5 liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine. The car’s body was stiffer than the previous models, but the Subaru engineers managed to make it 10kg lighter than the earlier models. The fourth generation WRX STI’s final version came out in 2018 with a 2.5litre turbocharge and 6 speed manual transmission.

What does STI mean? During the 1950’s Subaru focused on building ‘people’s cars’ to be in line with the changes that occurred post-war in Japan. It was only during the 80’s that the company decided to venture into the motorsports arena. As a result, the Subaru Technica International (STI) was launched. Subaru teamed with the British Motorsports Company to help them build more competitive cars for the track more than the roads.