New 2022 Subaru WRX Revealed
It’s been a long wait but today, Subaru revealed the latest generation WRX sports sedan with real rally-for-the-road impressions.
It seems a small evolution of the current WRX with sculpted wheel arches, a reworked front grille and some entirely new colours. The big exterior changes are the more powerful cladding panels and a whole new rear treatment design with a wider but shorter spoiler and a bootlid trim that runs across the whole back. It’s traditional Subaru design. Weird but serious – with a powerful presence and no soft edges.
It’s the first of the Subaru sports cars built on the Subaru Global Platform. Subaru has lifted the engine from the Subaru Ascent, a 2.4-litre, turbocharged flat-four and then tweaked it with some electronic techno-wizardy to up the performance. The numbers look like this: 202kW and 350Nm. Not much of a change on the old car but more is still more. Expect a slight shave off the 6,5-second 0 – 100kph sprint.
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Transmission options seem to be the same with a 6-speed manual on offer as well as a Subaru Performance Transmission, a reworked and reportedly better CVT. Again. It is said to mimic gear changes in better fashion for a more sporty driving experience. Expect the full suite of Subaru all-wheel drive electronic aids such as torque vectoring and the SI-Drive driving mode system but the bigger news is that the dampers, steering, chassis and all-round handling has been tuned to greater effect. This is good news from what was a grippy machine before. There’s also reportedly a GT version with electronically adjustable dampers. Yikes. That’s a surprise. Subaru claims 75% increase in stiffness of the suspension mounting joints and 27% stiffness in overall structural rigidity. That’s the new platform to a large degree but it’s good news for us.
The new Subaru WRX adopts the latest Subaru interior design architecture. The entire interior elevates the WRX to expected and modern levels of UX and design. The 11,6-inch portrait touchscreen operating concept is excellent(basing this on our Subaru Outback experience) with a new flat-bottom sports steering wheel.
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Expect Subaru’s latest EyeSight Technology in here too so those 5-star safety credentials should only be better.
Nteo Nkoli, Marketing Manager at Subaru SA has excitedly confirmed that the car is indeed coming. “I can confirm that the car is due to arrive in South Africa before the end of the second quarter in 2022.” Trim levels can’t be confirmed at this time but the local Subaru operation is understandably buoyed at the prospect of launching a new and exciting model like this to the local market.
This semi-conductor crisis continues to haunt many OEM’s including the likes of Subaru. We hope that it won’t stall the arrival of this even further.
