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PRICE : For 2015 Subaru WRX $37,500
A car built for Canadian winters, the all-wheel drive Subaru WRX has long been a perennial favourite for northern drivers who’ve still got a taste for sporty driving. The 2015 Subaru WRX has made its world debut at the LA Auto Show, and its packed full of the same Subie goodness that’s made it an enthusiast household name.
The big news for the new WRX is its employment of a continuously variable transmission (CVT) in place of its old 6-speed automatic. Hot shoes will not like this news item one bit – but before you throw your helmet at the screen, please note that a proper H-gate 6-speed manual is still available, putting power down through all four wheels exactly as your gear selection wills it.
A new 2.0-litre turbocharged flat-four does duty in the WRX spinning, spinning out 268 horsepower and 258 pound-feet of torque between 2,000 and 5,000 rpm. A new 2.5 litre turbo flat-four is rumoured to power the all-new WRX STI when it launches – mated only to a 6-speed manual.
At 1,562 kilograms (3,443 lbs) the new 2015 WRX is 59 pounds heavier than the outgoing model, but the 2015's additional power and torque will easily offset this weight gain. From a standing start, the new WRX will reach 60 mph (96 km/h) in 5.4 seconds - a seriously fast acceleration time for a non-STI car.
Even the regular non-STI WRX on display at the LA Auto Show looked rally-ready with plenty of STI styling cues. We sincerely hope that when the new WRX STI does launch, it shows up with its traditional gold wheels.
Fuel economy figures are as follows: the 6-speed manual is projected to return 11.2 L/100km (21 mpg) city and 8.4 L/100km (28 mpg) highway while the CVT-equipped car will get a rather unimpressive 12.4 L/100km (19 mpg) city and 9.4 L/100km (25 mpg) on the open highway.
Canadian pricing and availability are yet to be released, but expect the 2015 Subaru WRX to appear in Canadian show rooms in the first half of 2014.
EXTERIOR
Befitting of Subaru's flagship performance model, the Subaru WRX exterior presents a performance all-wheel drive car with aggressive yet refined styling.
The front end was built using a nose cone design for a dynamic solid shape, starting with Subaru's unified design motif, the hexagonal grille. The intrepid shape of the new hawkeye headlights is paired with the aggressive wide and low styling the WRX is known for.
For side design, the bottom end of the A-pillar was extended 200 mm toward the front from the previous model and the C-pillar now smoothly transits into the trunk surface for a flowing silhouette. Front fender ducts and special sharp side sill spoilers show off the sporty nature of the Subaru WRX.
The rear design further enhances the WRX's appeal as a performance model. The diffuser-integrated bumper and twin dual mufflers emphasize the low center of gravity and driving performance. Specially designed rear combination lamps were given a thin shape to highlight vehicle width. A small rear spoiler also enhances aerodynamic performance.
A shark fin antenna is used to match the body and add more refinement to the styling.
New alloy wheels (17x8J) in dark gun metal were designed to be more rigid and lighter.
LED lighting is employed for the headlights (low beams and clearance lamps), tail and brake lights and high-mounted brake light in an effort to improve fuel efficiency by saving power.
WR Blue Pearl and Crystal White Pearl are two new exterior colors.
INTERIOR
The Subaru WRX interior is all about high performance. The driver's seat was designed to be like a cockpit?the moment the driver opens the door, they get transported miles from their daily life.
For the first time, the WRX gets a D-shaped steering wheel for a sportier impression. The grip shape is easy to hold onto with a small diameter for improved operability and tactile feedback, making for a more appealing driving experience.
As a symbol of the racing spirit, a silver ring engraved with the letters "WRX" rests around the shift lever on manual models.
Befitting a high performance vehicle, the seats are designed with superior holding ability.
Decorative carbon trim panels and metal trim accents have been arranged around the interior, centered on the controlling elements. This gives the interior a quality feel and harkens back to the Subaru WRX racing image.
The meters employ a dual dial layout with horizontal needles, 3.5-inch full color liquid crystal display and aluminum rings for improved functionality and a quality feel. The attention to detail gives a refined, performance feel of a high performance car. The red-based lighting elicits a performance racing image, made even more noticeable by its contrast with the white needles.
As another racing symbol, the multi-function display is equipped with a boost pressure display screen.
The interior is solid black from roof to floor, bringing the whole interior together and allowing the driver to concentrate on driving. Quality materials soft to the touch are used in places the passenger will touch frequently for a more quality interior feel.
Red is used throughout on stitching and meters in homage to the WRX racing image.
Models equipped with navigation systems support Aha Radio.
The Subaru WRX uses harman/kardon audio systems custom tuned to acoustically fit the WRX.
PURE POWER IN YOUR CONTROL
The product concept "Pure Power in Your Control" was established during development of the new Subaru WRX. This concept aims to reach an even higher order of "absolute speed" and "driving excitement" for sports sedans, the goal pursued in successive generations of WRX models.This product concept was embodied to maximize the potential of the turbo Boxer engine and the pursuit of ultimate control performance, allowing drivers to steer the vehicle exactly as they imagine. To this end, the body has been made lighter and more rigid, integrating extensive chassis reinforcements.
CHASSIS
The electrically assisted power steering has a quicker ratio now, changed from 14.8:1 in the previous WRX to 13.3:1. The steering-gear mounts are 230 percent stiffer than the Impreza’s. The front brake discs now measure 12.4 inches, up from 11.6, and are clamped by opposed-piston calipers. They hide behind new wheels that are 5 percent more rigid but the same mass as the old wheels and wear 235/45R-17 Dunlop SP Sport Maxx summer tires.
While the new WRX doesn’t offer? much more power, it does have a lot more ?stiffness. The springs, dampers, crossmembers, subframe bushings, and front? control-arm bushings and attachments? are all stiffer. The front and rear anti-roll bars are meatier, the rear trailing-link bushings are upgraded, the struts are thicker, and Subaru added stiffening plates to the front suspension mounts. Overall, torsional rigidity is up 9 percent over the regular Impreza and 41 percent compared with the outgoing WRX. Subaru claims the car can pull 1.10 g in corners—plenty good for an Impreza.
DRIVETRAIN & SUSPENSION
One of the few vehicles truly comfortable on nearly every type of road, the WRX hardly belies its rally heritage.
Filtering out only the roughest pavement, the WRX's suspension is remarkably compliant. Credit goes mainly to the stiff structure, which lets Subaru pick and choose suspension bits to deliver a nearly luxury-grade ride that wouldn't feel out of place in a sporty car stickering for twice as much.
We pushed the WRX hard through some of Northern California's most scenic byways, challenging the car on a virtual rally stage of pavement types. On the glassy smooth stretches of Highway 1 along the pacific, we reveled in the car's near lack of body lean. In tight corners on a mountain road so narrow it was rarely marked with a center stripe, the WRX's quick steering was devoid of any hint of the vagueness that so often plagues electric setups.
We could have wished for a touch more road communication through the tiller, but this is still one of the finest electric systems we've experienced short of Subaru's own BRZ.
What surprised us the most was the WRX's high comfort level on the highway. Aside from a little more tire roar than we wanted to see, it was a smooth and silent operator.
On the power front, the WRX provides robust acceleration now with the benefit of virtually no lag. We did find first gear to be a little short in the stick shift model, but that's clearly not a problem with the CVT. The six-speed is a joy to operate, feeling far more refined than its five-speed predecessor.
Each of the CVT's three drive modes revealed its own unique personality. Frankly, we didn't much care for Intelligent, which seemed too eager to keep revs low. Sport livened things up, especially with the gear lever slipped into manual mode with its six pre-set ratios. Even though they aren't real gears, they present a reasonable enough facsimile that we enjoyed slapping our way through them with the paddles. Sport#'s eight fake gears were two too many, on the other hand.
ALL-AROUND SAFETY
Following Subaru's safety philosophy of all-around safety, all areas of safety performance have been enhanced. With Subaru symmetrical full-time AWD at its base, active safety was further enriched on the 2015 WRX by making the body lighter as well as improving rigidity and chassis performance along with the VDC system. All of this gives the WRX the best hazard avoidance in its class, ensuring the driving experience is exciting but safe in every scenario. In terms of passive safety, the all-new WRX employs greater use of high-tensile steel. While helping to reduce weight, these changes also enable a stronger body with world-class safety performance in collision tests from the front, rear and sides. Collision-absorbing material has also been added in the side engine compartment for increased pedestrian protection.
HANDLING
If the WRX powertrain didn't sway you, maybe the big-diameter anti-sway bars will. In concert with the WRX's very good electric power steering, and its defeatable traction systems, the WRX's drum-tight suspension setup gives it awesome transient responses and the elusive road-glue formula so, so lacking from anything with "Si" in its name these days.
From electronica to hardware, the WRX goes overboard to deliver godly grip. Both WRX AWD systems have electronic torque vectoring--not active side-to-side torque distribution, but a light application of brake to the inside front wheel to tighten up the WRX's cornering line, to a point. And the WRX's stability and AWD systems get their own control: Normal, Off, and a Traction mode that lets you flip off the stability nanny aids but leave on torque vectoring.
Aside from the obvious props given to the WRX's all-wheel drive and low center of gravity, there are higher-rate springs and stiffer shocks; beefier crossmembers and subframe bushings; stouter strut tubes; and more front-end body structure that tightens up the basic Impreza body for small-overlap crash tests but also pays dividends in handling. All of those make it easier for its electric steering to do more with a motor and a rack than most compacts: it feeds in natural amounts of weight and reaction from the road from a tighter ratio than the one in the basic Impreza. It follows kinky roads with admirable precision, though like a lot of electric systems coupled to summer tires, the WRX finds every groove in textured concrete roads and wants to follow most of them.
That might not be as frustrating as it sounds, because the WRX is set up so stiffly, you'd do well to debate its use as a daily driver.
Frigid temps are no friend of first drives, but we had no choice but to flog our WRXs through some sub-freezing numbers, to work it out of a funk and back into one. They took a while to warm up, but the 17-inch, Dunlop SP Sport Maxx RT tires weren't the limiting factor in our hairpin- and pothole-filled path across Napa County. The brakes were. Oppressively numb, with poor pedal stroke and feedback, they discouraged any nuanced footwork. It could have been the ambient temperatures, at least for a little while, but until we learned to stomp on them remorselessly, we couldn't carry WRX-grade speed into the tastiest corners.
PERFORMANCE
They're oxygen-starved by the WRX's new turbo four, which is the same tart performer that's in the 2014 Subaru Forester XT--the Best Car To Buy over at The Car Connection. There's nothing not to love here, outside maybe of the warm blast of forced-induction noise that drops by with anything more than a hair of throttle. The 2.0-liter four has direct injection, a twin-scroll turbo and intercooling, and its own cam profiles and valve-spring rates, for a net 268 horsepower, and peak torque of 258 pound-feet that hangs around from 2,000 rpm to 5,200 rpm. We'd say this thing pulls like a train--if trains weren't run by ginormous diesels, and didn't sound instead like David Coverdale's own Conair hair dryer, on the Tumble Dry High setting he seems to prefer.
The WRX's stock and trade transmission is a six-speed manual. It's a cog over the five-speed unit in the last WRX, and its first- and second-gear carbon synchros don't mind a little slam-shifting through its long lever action. In this transfer case, the WRX's all-wheel-drive system has a viscous coupling at the center that splits power 50:50 front to rear, and can shuffle torque front to back as traction needs arise. All told, the manual WRX hits 60 mph in about 5.4 Subaru-estimated seconds, about the same as the last-generation car.
So here's where the trolls begin to win over some of the weaker members of the herd. There's an automatic transmission back on the options list, not just an automatic but a continuously variable transmission.This CVT is not as inequal as other CVTs, though. As we've found in the Forester, it's cleverly programmed (in "SI-Drive") to act like a paddle-shifted automatic when it needs to, and to relax into a fuel-saving CVT idiom when it doesn't.
In "Intelligent" mode, it does the fuel-economy thing, adjusting its pulleys more gradually, tipping in throttle more hesitantly. In Sport mode, the throttle response quickens--and when the lever's moved to Manual, it actuates a program that uses paddles to act like a six-speed automatic. (The WRX will snap into that mode any time throttle use goes higher than 40 percent, too).
Then there's the Sport Sharp mode, the one that feels most convincingly like a good dual-clutch transmission. It actuates an eight-step program for the CVT, with full manual control via those paddles, delivering clean ratio changes without any of the shift shock a conventional torque-converter automatic might dole out. It's no PDK in terms of shift quickness or sheer mechanical complexity, but it must be the CVT that's most fully realized the possibilities inherent in the design.
All told here, the CVT-equipped WRX in its most aggressive mode can reach 60 mph in about 5.9 seconds. It also has a different all-wheel-drive system, one with a planetary-gear center diff and a 45:55 torque bias, and linkage to the WRX's steering and yaw sensors to change torque split.
Gas mileage isn't super wonderful: the manual's rated at 21/28 mpg or 24 mpg combined, the CVT at 19/25/21 mpg. Subaru says if you left the CVT in Intelligent mode all the time you'd edge closer to 24 mpg combined--but who has that kind of self-restraint anymore?
ENGINE
The 2015 Subaru WRX is equipped with a new high-performance 2.0-litre horizontally opposed DIT engine for improved power delivery with an eye on efficiency. The WRX's new DIT engine boasts improved performance over the outgoing model, producing a maximum 268 horsepower at 5,600 rpm and 258 lb. ft. of torque from 2,000 to 5,200 rpm while maintaining a high level of environmental performance.
SAFETY & FEATURES
The WRX should carry on with the Impreza's excellent crash-test scores--very good on the NHTSA scale, top-drawer according to the IIHS. It adds a driver knee airbag to its standard-equipment list, as well as adjustable front headrests and a rearview camera. The camera's output is displayed on a small 4.3-in. LCD screen that doubles as a boost gauge display, a VDC monitor, and an audio readout.
It's serviceable, but a prettier display takes over some of those functions when the optional navigation system's installed. We're no fans of Subaru's stabs at infotainment, but the display is bigger, and adds harman/kardon audio with 9 speakers and 440 watts of sound, along with Aha smartphone connectivity.
Among other standard features, the WRX now comes with standard automatic climate control; a flat-bottomed steering wheel that tilts and telescopes; Bluetooth; HD Radio; a single-CD player; and steering-wheel audio and phone controls. Other major options include a power driver seat; heated front seats; a sunroof; and pushbutton start.
The 2015 WRX goes on sale early in 2014.
SPECIFICATION
► Length : 4,595 mm
► Width : 1,795 mm
► Height : 1,475 mm
► Wheelbase : 2,650 mm
► Engine : 2.0-liter Horizontally-Opposed direct injection turbo "DIT" engine
► Displacement : 1,998 cc
► Transmission options : six-speed manual or Sport Lineartronic
► Max output : 268 hp / 5,600 rpm
► Max torque : 258 lb.-ft. / 2,000-5,200 rpm
► Tire size : 235/45 R17
► Seating capacity : 5
TRANSMISSION
A new six-speed manual transmission optimizes the gear and gear stick ratio from the outgoing five-speed model to keep engine speeds lower, enabling better fuel economy and quieter driving at high speeds. The newly introduced Sport Lineartronic transmission draws out the full potential of the 2.0-litre DIT SUBARU BOXER engine in terms of power, torque and environmental friendliness, allowing for a rewarding driving experience. In Subaru Intelligent Drive (SI-DRIVE), selecting Sport Sharp (S#) switches to eight-speed shifting. SI-DRIVE's Sport Sharp mode within Sport Lineartronic emulates traditional shift points to let drivers feel the WRX's impressive power and performance.
2015 SUBARU WRX (VIDEO)