Quote:
Originally Posted by WolfpackS2k
Perhaps I should have phrased it differently. It will still use the same platform but won't share any body panels with the Impreza. Nor will it any longer be called the Impreza WRX, just WRX.
If it was really just going to be a "beefed up" Impreza it would already be out. The current gen Impreza has been out almost 2 years; Subaru pushing the current WRX with it's outdated interior and crapbox 5 speed manual is doing nobody any favors.
|
Being called just a WRX is true. Having the WRX made the Impreza chassis itself more expensive to produce since the WRX required certain things that the Impreza never needed. I suspect it will very similar to previous iterations; that is, drastically overstyled on top of the same underlying sheet metal as the plain jane model. The only difference this time around is that it's "not" an Impreza.
As to the second part: false. I suspect there's a good reason the WRX wasn't released with the current Impreza as a "beefed up" Impreza. Check it: new Impreza doesn't use the EJ engine that the WRX uses. They likely wanted to develop a turbo DI engine off the FB/FA iterations FIRST, THEN stick it in a chassis built around that engine, THEN call it the WRX.
Supa edit: It's logical to think about it in this manner; FHI was already working with Toyota on the twins so they were getting experience with DI. They need DI to survive in this world, so once they learned how adapt DI to their existing FB architecture the FA was born (using Toyota's D4S). Using this knowledge, Subaru developed their own DI system (see Japanese models) and then went further to create a performance engine by turbocharging it. We're just waiting to see that engine dropped in the proper chassis now.