Make note of Chris's comments at the end of the video, not about how much he loves his job but the general philosophy about going faster. "Fun...Less is more, let's focus more on the driver and less on the machine, build everything about him." FT-86!
seriously, best car commercial i've ever seen. i think we all wanted one (more or less) prior to this, but it does confirm that this car is (for one journalist anyway) everything we were hoping for. if i go this way on my next car, i'd totally take that mechanical diff option, and be seriously worried about addressing that brake fade issue right away. but otherwise, this is kind of like our chance to buy an ae86 before it's proven by the likes of tsuchiya. motor swap possibilities and applications are mind blowing. i love the passion behind the development, and it's subtlety. and that quote from Chris really does sum it up. thanks for posting this! looking forward to the next track session, even/especially if it's in a kart. one more great quote from the film: Tada-san "sorry we've kept you waiting so long"
Like many others I've been holding my breath about this one but this has been the most informative video I've seen of this car so far. You can tell by the way Chris's expression when he's trying to drive this car around this very technical race track that it's not a difficult car to drive fast and fun. This might be a good contender for the likes of the MX-5 and RX-8. I'm looking forward to seeing one of these at a track event soon.
Also note out the car handles. The Imprezas should have handled like that since the beginning. This is not a awd vs. rwd thing either. I'm talking about chassis control, stability, even dynamic motion, all the crap that the Imprezas didn't have.
This is a purpose built performance car, the performance of the impreza was always an add on, it wasnt built around performance. Like Ive said before, the impreza is an econo car, and it always has been, regardless of how many turbos it can have bolted onto it.
So...what do you want to get when you buy a STI? The econobox I guess. You buy the base Impreza for the econobox. Perfect sense. Then you've got the WRX. Oooh! A sport version! Boy I hope it's more sporty, faster, feels stiffer, and has some decent performance numbers (accel, corner, braking). Wait. There's a performance, performance version? The STI you say? It's got some trick parts you can't get in the already performance WRX? Oh my it must be awesome. Nope. The parts go on for potential but it's still a very similar car. It lacks all the core traits that make it a serious driver's car, and this saddens me. It's saddened me since the STI first existed. The WRX should have been what the STI is, which it magically became over the years. However, the STI isn't more. In some cases it's not even better. It has hardware to support more modding, but the benefit isn't there unless you actually mod the thing. However, you could also mod a base Impreza or WRX while you're modding and get to similar end points. The sad part is Subaru knows how to make a great sports car. They've been in motorsports for many years. They make special versions of their cars, not just selectively sold but bespoke experiments. Yet they give the consumer a very vanilla car over and over and do so not only in the base model but every model up to the STI. It's a trade-off for the masses, I totally understand. It's just a shame that one has to mod a car just to create simply a reasonable performer. By reasonable I mean basic stuff like not understeering like a pig, having good chassis control, and not being so vastly isolated from the car that you feel absolutely disconnected and oblivious to what's actually happening with the car at any point in time. Maybe I'm asking too much. Maybe the STI was never meant to be a driver's car. If not, what was it made for? What was it made for over what the WRX offered to the general purchasing population? At the end of the day, I'm glad all of these cars exist. I'm also glad that Subaru and Toyota got together to build a great rwd sports car. I'm glad it actually handles well and is fun to drive. I hope it's the first of many.
