Yahoo Autos The Greatest Subaru Impreza on Earth Is $600,000 and Worth Every Cent
There’s a single paddle sprouting out of the steering column, nestled to the right of the wheel. It’s wide and large, easy to push or pull while keeping a hand on the wheel, a rally innovation for when Colin McRae, Richard Burns, or Petter Solberg just had to shift with one hand while using the other to control a slide-through a slick hairpin. This is the only way to shift the Prodrive P25’s six-speed sequential gearbox, a car that promises to be the greatest roadgoing Impreza ever.
Prodrive is pretty much the only company qualified to build a perfected Impreza. It ran Subaru’s extraordinarily successful World Rally Championship program until 2008. While Prodrive also ran other wildly successful programs like the wonderful Ferrari 550 GT1 cars, Aston Martin’s pro GT race cars, and even revamping the BAR Formula 1 team, it’s still those 555-branded blue Imprezas that scream Prodrive to me.
In 1998, the 22B was the top dog Impreza, an all-wheel-drive widebody coupe with 276 hp from its turbocharged 2.0-liter flat-four linked to a five-speed manual, all for the price of a BMW M3. The difference is that while the M3 was sold in the U.S., Subaru didn’t start selling fast Imprezas here until 2002. Not that there are all that many 22Bs; Subaru built 400 of them for Japan, with a handful more going to Australia and the UK. That’s it. Now that they’re eligible to be imported, we’ve seen them sell for more than $300,000.
Thing is, the lore surrounding the 22B may have built it up into something more than it really is. “Don’t get me wrong, I love the shape, but if you just have a standard WRX or a narrow-body STI, that’ll get you 99 percent of the way to the 22B,” says Prodrive’s Richard Thompson, who rally fans may know as Tommo. Thompson helped engineer Colin McRae’s Prodrive-prepped Imprezas to three straight world rally championships. He also has extensive 22B experience since Prodrive was responsible for importing the UK’s 16 cars. The P25 is Thompson’s baby.
It starts with the shell from an Impreza, which needs to be perfect to even be considered for P25 duty. “It doesn't matter about running gear because everything goes in the bin, but the body shell condition is the key,” Thompson says. “We've hoovered up the best base body shells, however, to something like, you know, 700 hours going into the body shell alone from getting it back to a zero point to dealing with any kind of minor rust imperfections. We often find that when we split the body shells, even if they've come from dry state, Sacramento or something like that, there may well be a tweak to a chassis leg that we'll need to fix. Or when we drop them onto the jig, then there's some remedial work.”
Close up with Prodrive’s prototype, and it’s a mix of Nineties Impreza and modern fit and finish. The panel gaps are far better, and the body panels are obviously better finished, mainly because many–like the hood, trunk, wing, and fenders–are brand new and made of carbon fiber. The paint, here in a special blue for the P25, is perfect. There are new head and taillights–not off-the-shelf units, Prodrive made these. There’s a new front bumper with more and wider openings to aid in cooling. The wheels are way larger (19 x 8.5) than what you’d see on a 22B (17 x 8.5) and they’re grey, though don’t worry, you can get them in gold, or really any color you want if you give Prodrive the paint code. Same with the body.
Climb in, and the first thing you notice is that the door shuts just like one from a 1997 Impreza, which is to say it lacks the solid, vault-like feel of a Porsche or a Mercedes. Instead, it clunks and rattles. And while the suede seats are supportive and well bolstered, the rest of the interior lacks the milled, bespoke, jewel-like feel of other $500,000 cars. “The higher the performance goes, the lower the rest of it can be,” Thompson says. “There's only so much we can do with door shuts and that the clunk that you had from your ‘97, it's not easy to change that. It is what it is.” Thompson calls it an “acceptable interior,” an accurate assessment.
This is not just a track day car, but it will surely see track duty from its 25 lucky owners. Amazingly, other than a few one-offs, this is Prodrive’s first road car project. It’s a massive shift, not only in what regulations need to be adhered to, but the level of fit and finish that’s needed. The P25 needs to not only perform like something that has a Prodrive badge on it, but it also needs a finished interior, air conditioning, and a stereo.
The parts of the interior that matter are perfect. The pedal box is a work of art, with three floor-mounted pedals, though you really only need two of them. (The clutch is by-wire, so if you are in first and release it while sitting still, the ECU will keep the car from stalling. It could’ve been totally automated, but the clutch pedal both gives it a rally feel and if you shift with it at slower speeds, it reduces wear on the dog box. The more you know!) The wheel is perfectly sized and not too thick or thin. The rear seats in this car were replaced with a roll cage. It’s all very serious. Then you start it up.
There’s a manic bark from the Akrapovic exhaust as the EJ25 four-cylinder fires up. The EJ25 is the engine from the previous generation STI, the final EJ-series engine, except here its been totally overhauled. The 2.5-liter engine has all new internals, a new turbo, and a number of refinements to give it 440 hp. The goal was for it to hit 60 in slightly more than 3 seconds. On one of its first tests, the P25 hit 60 in 2.8.
With Tomasz Jermolaj, the P25’s engine guru, riding shotgun, I got two brief runs around the short handling course at the UK’s Millbrook Proving Grounds. We start off in road mode, which means it shifts less aggressively, has different strategies for how the center diff locks, and has 360 hp. This is still a lot of power, especially in an all-wheel drive car that weighs just about 2500 pounds.
The initial impression is just how urgent every part of the car feels. The steering rack is wildly quick, the front end darting on turn-in. Initial bite from the brakes, which are unassisted and lack ABS, is smacking-into-a-wall strong. In road mode, the center diff only locks during braking to help manage the force. And the gearbox shifts telepathically. Getting out of a 2023 WRX and into the P25 is like going from a church van to an F22 Raptor.
It gets more exciting when the switch flips to sport. That gives full power and changes the diff strategies again to assist on power down, a good thing because there’s no traction or stability control. The shifts get more aggressive, a quick grab or push of the paddle slams it into gear. This is a true sequential manual, so it’s not a smooth, ultra-refined dual-clutch experience. Not that anyone who is buying what is meant to be a raucous, grunge-era Impreza would desire smooth shifts.
There’s also one more mode, sport plus, which adds a light amount of anti-lag to the mix, made possible by the car’s Bosch motorsport ECU. Anti-lag keeps the turbo spooled up to give quicker response on corner exit. Thompson says that they didn’t go aggressive with the anti-lag because it’s really only useful if a driver is using it properly. Anti-lag generates heat and increases exhaust gas temperature if a driver is off throttle for long periods of time. While a pro rally driver will be dancing from pedal to pedal, blending them together, they will rarely coast for an extended period. Non pros–likely many of the 25 people who have already ordered a P25 (it’s sold out)–will have large coast phases in their driving. Aggressive anti-lag is cool, but makes little sense if it won’t be used properly.
On my two runs in the car, I kept coming back to how wonderful the suspension tuning was. This is an extraordinarily stiff-feeling car, but that feeling comes from the shell. Prodrive worked hard on making the body stiff, which lets the suspension do its job on Millbrook’s bumps, keeping the wheels in contact with the ground and showing Prodrive’s expertise in rough surface tuning. Exactly what you’d expect from a company known for rally excellence. While it does have an electric parking brake, there’s also a hydraulic brake in the center console. Pull it, it opens the center diff, grabs the rear four-piston brakes, and then you can have some real fun.
“There's nothing that I think could currently get around the West Coast of Wales quicker,” Thompson says. “It owns a- and b-roads. That's what it should be. You know, you should be able to come into a hairpin on a b-road. Flick it in on the handbrake. Jump on the gas and then drive it round with a nice power slide. You can't do that with a Bugatti Veyron.”
Not only can’t you do it with a Veyron, but nobody who buys a Veyron would want to. These cars, though they live in the same price neighborhood–at our current exchange rates the P25 is nearly $600,000–the clientele couldn’t be more different. Many Veyron owners are buying a status symbol. Nobody is buying a 25-year-old Subaru as a status symbol, they just want to drive. That’s what makes the P25 so great.
You Might Also Like
