Subaru S209 Driven. Best. WRX STI. Ever. (Video)

"Driving Sports TV" (drivingsports) 09/26/2019 at 17:37 • Filed to: Subaru WRX, Subaru S209, New Car

2

8

On Tuesday I flew out to Palmer Motorsport Park in !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to drive something special: the first-ever STI S-car for North America. The S209 is a much bigger deal than just a car. It’s the beginning of a new era for high-performance Subarus, and it’s very exciting. 

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > Driving Sports TV 09/26/2019 at 19:43

1

Best. WRX STI. Ever.

That’s quite a statement while the 22B exists.

Driving Sports TV > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 09/26/2019 at 19:49

0

I expect this car would destroy the 22b around a track. 1998 was a long time ago and automotive tech has come a long way. I say that having driven a real 22b (the one that appears mid-point in this  video) . Granted, it was across a parking lot for about 5 minutes. Lol.

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > Driving Sports TV 09/26/2019 at 20:03

0

I expect pretty much any modern hot hatch would destroy a 22B round a track - as you say, 1998 was a long time ago. But by that logic most  new halo models are “best X ever”.

Does this absolutely wipe the floor with the vanilla WRX, everything in its price range (except back then the equally batshit souped-up Evos), and a fair proportion of cars 5x its price, the way the STI special editions did back in the 90s? (serious question, not being negative).

I’ve never driven a 22B but I was lucky enough to have decent fang in a first-gen RA back in the day, and I can still remember the sensation of “holy shit, this can’t possibly be a road car!” I suspect that nowadays if I drove it again my impression would be more like “rattly, not that quick, horrendous lag, really nice road feel”.

Driving Sports TV > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 09/26/2019 at 20:23

1

Legit questions. The S209 absolutely destroys the standard WRX, that’s an easy call. It even surpasses the standard STI in all the ways that matter by big margins.

Car and Driver lapped VIR (using a prototype S209 a few months ago) at 2:59.8. That’s right in there with a 2015 Mercedes-AMG C63 S, 2018 Audi TT RS and 2016 ATS-V Coupe. It’s equal to a Challenger Hellcat Widebody (which has a huge horsepower advantage on those long straight-aways at VIR, even if it cant really turn.) So I think that’s pretty good company since all of those have way more horsepower than the Subaru. And in terms of price, both the ATS-V and TT RS are likely the closest, but are proba bly still more expensive than the Subaru, being in the high $60k - b efore adding some useful options. You can look at the whole list here: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a23319884/lightning-lap-times-historical-data/

DipodomysDeserti > Driving Sports TV 09/26/2019 at 21:09

1

What’s a track?

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > DipodomysDeserti 09/26/2019 at 22:05

1

A super  special   stage.

readthecomments > Driving Sports TV 09/27/2019 at 13:41

1

What were the best lap times of the day? Running clockwise turn 5-4 is tricky

Driving Sports TV > readthecomments 09/27/2019 at 16:39

0

Good to hear since I pretty much always messed up 5-4. Lap times were slow, I’m sure. We (myself, Top Gear magazine, Autoblog, Jalopnik and some others) were there to test features of the car, not set lap times. That said, I just looked at the onboard video for a random lap — I think it was my second time around, with traffic in front of me — I did a 2:04. I also only got up to 113 on the straight because of cars in front of me.