News
Posted Thursday, December 28, 2023 at 9:45pm
Automakers love to sell emotion and aspiration. Luxury vehicles must exude opulence. Sports cars sell on adrenaline. Trucks? Often a measure of your masculinity. In the subcompact SUV space, none of those works. There is nothing inherently exciting or luxurious about a lifted hatchback. But savvy marketers understand anything with four wheels can take you places, transporting your mind—if not your person—to anywhere but here. For many consumers, especially those with only $30,000 or so… Read More →
Posted Thursday, December 28, 2023 at 8:56pm
French-based Hyundai team 2C Competition is aiming to bring two cars to next year’s ARA series – with team manager Florent Peronnet confident they can carry the fight to Subaru and two-time champion Brandon Semenuk in 2024. It was Peronnet’s team which ran Ken Block’s American campaign last season and his daughter Lia had potentially featured in the 2C plan for 2024, before the announcement of her F1 Academy drive for Williams next year. Read More →
Posted Saturday, December 23, 2023 at 9:45pm
If you read our BRZ tS review, you know I was just in Sicily driving some Subarus. As you’ve no doubt gathered by now, the other car was the Subaru WRX TR. With the demise of the U.S. market STI at the hands of America’s goofy emissions regime the WRX TR assumes the mantle of Subaru’s most performance oriented car. It’s also the last AWD sedan you can get with a manual transmission in the… Read More →
Posted Friday, December 22, 2023 at 9:43pm
After 13 months and change, MotorTrend’s yearlong test 2022 Subaru WRX Limited sedan has regrettably left our garage. Over the course of nearly 14,000 miles, the jack-of-all-trades WRX found itself shlepping staffers around town, tackled the best driving roads the American West has to offer, road tripped, and even went overlanding. Here’s how it held up since it first arrived in our fleet. Read More →
Posted Friday, December 22, 2023 at 9:43pm
SUVs and crossovers are undeniably popular and have dominated the new-car market for years now. Compared with passenger cars such as sedans and hatchbacks, they offer the promise of extra interior practicality and all-terrain capability, among other intangible attributes. But are SUVs actually better than cars? It’s a question that depends entirely on your perspective, but we set out to answer it in objective terms as best we could. Read More →
Posted Thursday, December 21, 2023 at 9:40pm
In the Floriopoli pit garages, along the route of Sicily’s Targa Florio road race, there’s a roughly translated warning from the mayor to the residents of a local town. Dating to the race’s early days—which correspond to the invention of cars themselves—it reads, “Listen, listen. Tomorrow there is the car races. Keep inside the house children, dogs, pigs, and chickens. Who dies, dies because of their own fault, and the mayor does not take the… Read More →
Posted Wednesday, December 20, 2023 at 10:38pm
The original WRX TR launched in 2006 as a stripped-down, minimalist trim aimed at buyers who planned to start modding their cars the day they got home from the dealership. The moniker stood for “Tuner Ready,” and the TR went without a rear spoiler, fog lights, or a fancy stereo. Why include a nice sound system that’ll immediately be replaced by a sweet Pioneer OEL head unit with a swimming-dolphin display and a Rockford amp… Read More →
Posted Wednesday, December 20, 2023 at 10:36pm
Sorry, this is not the long-awaited reincarnation of the STI. We’re expecting hybridization to invigorate the next one of those soon enough, for better or worse. In the interim, a new variant of the WRX—one delightfully free of thick orange cables and hefty battery packs—is being launched to fill a tiny gap in the lineup through the revival an old moniker: TR. Only this time around, instead of representing a “tuner-ready” no-frills version of this… Read More →
Posted Wednesday, December 20, 2023 at 10:34pm
Thirty years ago this fall, Subaru scored an historic 1-2-3 finish in the fourth running of the Hong Kong to Beijing Rally, which was taking place for the first time in six years. Ari Vatanen led home team-mates Colin McRae and Possum Bourne on the grueling week-long event being run as a candidate rally for inclusion in the following year’s Asia-Pacific Rally Championship. In doing so, Vatanen scored his first win on a stage rally… Read More →
Posted Monday, December 18, 2023 at 10:30pm
What’s the point of a hybrid Rally1 car without hybrid? It’s very straightforward: it’s a bridge across the fairly significant gap separating the World Rally Championship’s top two tiers. Stepping up to the sport’s fastest ever rally cars means more than just bracing yourself for almost twice as much power – there’s the weight of the car, how it uses its tires and, of course, the aero effect. Cutting the hybrid out reduces the cost… Read More →
