10 years ago, Subaru pulled out of the World Rally
Championship for good after sliding down the performance table and succumbing
to the ’08 economic meltdown. It was a sad end to what had been a great decade
for the team and rally spectators. Colin McRae started his WRC career with
Subaru, winning the WRC in 1995 and Petter Solberg joined in 2000 eventually
winning the 2003 WRC – beating the legendary Sebastian Loeb.
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| 1997 Impreza WRC car, image courtesy of H&H https://www.sportscarmarket.com/profile/1996-subaru-impreza-wrc97-rally-car |
The car at the heart of all of this was the Impreza, launched
in 1993, that would quickly put Subaru on the map. The Impreza’s famous dark
blue paint with lime yellow decals were instantly recognisable tearing through muddy
rally stages and Subaru capitalised on this by launching a host of
different versions including the STi and
Turbo models to capture the rally cars spirit. The Impreza and its rally wins
alone helped boost sales for the manufacture, who up until the Impreza’s launch
was only known in the farming community. The Impreza underwent a controversial
refresh in 2000 which saw the introduction of the infamous ‘bug’ headlights; it
polarized opinion so much that just 3 years later the Impreza was refreshed
again, with toned down styling. By 2008 the Impreza range diversified, the classic
saloon style was dropped and many were surprised that the Impreza became a
conventional looking hatchback. These later models didn’t enjoy quite the same
following as the earlier models and the Impreza name disappeared from the UK
market in 2013 due to poor Sterling/Yen exchange rates. Earlier this year, the
Impreza was bought back – along with its familiar saloon shape, although
whether it captures the public’s imagination like the early models in what is
now a very different market, remains to be seen.
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| Subaru Impreza today. Image: Car Magazine https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-reviews/subaru/subaru-impreza-2018-review/ |
While the glory days of the rally championships may be long
gone for Subaru, those early cars still live on and have become classics in their own right.
With their ready ability to be modified (and a dedicated community to support
it) the Impreza is a staple at car shows across the world and has a strong
following which will live on for a long time.
Recently, a second generation Impreza (00 – 07) race car was bought
to us to have fitted one of our 310mm chord high-downforce Carbon Fibre wings. The wing is designed using in-house CFD software to significantly increase down force at the rear,
and, being autoclaved from Carbon Fibre with clever internal stringers, weighs next to nothing. The wing sits atop CNC machined Alloy wing mounts,
which are powder coated in satin black for a slick finish and also feature an array
of mounting holes allowing you to finely adjust the wing’s angle of attack (AoA) to get a nice aero balance. The wing is completed by lightweight Carbon Fiber end plates.
It’s
a perfect match for the Impreza and can be fitted with minimal modification to
the boot lid. For Impreza owners who want to extract the most amount of
performance from their cars, we
now offer this package as a kit, available on our website.
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