Quote:
Originally Posted by White Comet
You're thinking only in terms of Impreza/WRX/STI. There's no rule that says the STI has to be boosted. They only have one model with that badge, after all.
If the Toyo version comes out with an NA 2.0L, why not the Subaru "STI" version with an NA 2.5L? Not saying this will happen, but there's no reason as to why it cannot.
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A lot of speculation here. Did Subaru unveil their prototype yet? Who's to say that there will be an STI version at all. Isn't the STI model based on racing efforts?
If so then we will have to assume that Subaru will be campaigning it somewhere. And on its own Subaru doesn't really have money to race in a lot of different classes. This car will be best suited for Super GT in the GT300 category. Best chance is if it's made, Subaru campaigns it instead of the RWD road-racing Impreza (but I'm not even sure if that is a factory effort or Cusco sponsored privateers).
As for what the STI version would be, I don't know too much about their philosophy tuning-wise. But how much all-motor experience do they have? And just sticking in a bigger motor sounds more like what Toyota did with the new Corolla XRS. Not something I would be hoping for.
As a Subaru outsider, to me it looks like STI takes a very complete tuning approach to their cars. Different transmission, diffs, engine, suspension, aero, cooling. Toyota, as of recently, does not.
This is unfortunate as they are likely leading the project. On the Toyota side we could hope that they would return to the philosophy they took with the TRD 2000GT and 3000GT but lately as discussed elsewhere they are just re-badging aftermarket pieces for Scions.
Finally it depends how competitive Toyota and Subaru are with each other image-wise. Would Toyota tolerate a very superior STI FT86 just after they got their asses handed to them in F1 while Subaru is still enjoying a lot of rally success (Pastrana and Block here, I don't know about the rest of the world)? Japanese like to compromise and I can't imagine a vast performance gap between the brands.