CarBrandLogos archive · Subaru · 1992

SubaruImpreza

A compact saloon that spent a decade beating purpose-built rally machinery.

Photo: Alexander-93 · CC BY-SA 4.0

The story

A defining chapter in Subaru history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Subaru Impreza, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

The Impreza arrived in 1992 to replace the Leone, and on paper it was unremarkable: a compact with a flat-four, available with front-wheel drive in Japan and all-wheel drive nearly everywhere else. What made it significant was the regulation change that met it. Group A rallying required the competition car to be based on a production model, and the Legacy was too large and too heavy to be ideal. Subaru had built a shorter, lighter car with the same mechanical architecture at exactly the right moment.

1995 WRX STI RA GC8 · Mr Bungle · Public domain

Design and engineering

The turbocharged WRX, and the harder-edged STI versions developed by Subaru Tecnica International, went to Prodrive in Britain to be turned into rally cars. Colin McRae took the drivers' title in 1995 and Subaru won three consecutive manufacturers' championships in the mid-1990s. Richard Burns won in 2001 and Petter Solberg in 2003, all in Imprezas. For most of a decade the blue and gold cars were the sport's constant, and the road-going WRX became the cheapest way to buy something with a plausible connection to them.

06-07 Subaru WRX · IFCAR · Public domain

In production

That connection was unusually direct. The rally programme fed homologation specials back into showrooms, of which the 22B STi of 1998, a widened two-door built in a short run, is the most sought after. In Britain and Australia the Impreza Turbo developed a following that had little to do with rallying and everything to do with the way a mid-priced four-door could embarrass expensive coupes on a wet road, helped by the noise of an unevenly firing boxer through a large-bore exhaust.

1995 Subaru Impreza GX 2WD sedan · OSX · Public domain

Legacy

Below the works cars, the Impreza did something almost as useful for Subaru. Group N regulations, which allow only limited modification, meant privateers could buy a standard WRX STI, add a cage and go rallying at national level, and for years the class was effectively a Subaru monoculture. That put the car in front of club-level competitors and spectators every weekend in dozens of countries, which no amount of advertising achieves.

Chapter 5

The shape changed repeatedly and not always to the customers' liking. The round headlamps of the 2000 car were unpopular enough that Peter Stevens was brought in to redraw the front, and the switch to a five-door hatchback in 2007 upset buyers who wanted a saloon, which Subaru continued to build until 2023.

Chapter 6

Subaru eventually separated the two ideas. The station wagon role passed to the Levorg, the raised versions became the Crosstrek, and in 2014 the WRX became its own model line, leaving the Impreza as the ordinary compact it had started as. That ordinariness was always the point: the reason the rally cars resonated was that the thing in the showroom shared their bones, and for a while a family hatchback from a small Japanese manufacturer was the most feared machine on a forest stage.

At a glance

The facts that define it.

Produced

1992–present

Body

2-door coupe

Technical specification

The Impreza, in detail.

Production: 1992–present
Class: Compact car
Body style: 2-door coupe (1992–2000); 4-door sedan (1992–2023); 5-door hatchback (2007–present); 5-door station wagon (1992–2007)
Layout: Front-engine, front-wheel drive (1992–present, JDM); Front-engine, all-wheel drive (1992–present)
Manufacturer: Subaru

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