The Japanese brand became a household name in the 1990s after Colin McRae won the 1995 World Rally Championship aboard the Subaru Impreza WRX, which later became one of the decade’s cult icons.
More titles followed with the Impreza WRX for Richard Burns (2001) and Petter Solberg (2003), establishing Subaru as a true performance marque, something which it has tried to keep going in the following two decades.
Though it has always remained consumer focused by offering a range of SUVs, the WRX sedan/wagon and BRZ sports coupe remain as its performance models, though the demise of the hotter STI brand in recent years has left customers wanting more.
Speaking to UK publication Auto Express, Subaru general manager for Europe, David Dello Stritto, admitted it’s possible for the marque to return to its heyday of producing performance car icons - and future models may come from an unexpected angle.
“EVs are coming and they’re making things that we’ve been dreaming of possible again, so we’re seeing almost a rebirth of that sort of blue car with the yellow paint on it. It’s becoming possible again,” Dello Stritto said.
“This is very exciting; they’re [enthusiasts] not the biggest group of Subaru buyers in Europe, but they’re very vocal and keep pushing us.
“Now we’ve got electric powertrains allowing us to do that, maybe at some point in the future we could start playing with that.”
The Impreza WRX STI - later simply the WRX STI - stood as the brand’s performance flagship for more than a quarter of a century, and became Subaru’s answer to the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution.
Its demise came in 2021 when the final ‘VA’ generation WRXs were produced, with the now-current VB-gen model not offering an STI variant.
In 2022, Subaru said its STI division would focus on future powertrain technologies such as electric vehicles, off the back of launching the E-RA concept.
Speaking to Auto Express, a Subaru insider said it would be difficult to invoke the spirit of the classic Impreza WRX in an EV, given its unique selling point was its throbbing flat-four boxer engine.
“There’s a recognition that Subaru has been out of the game for a long time and it would be good to get back into it, although it’s a bit early to say how that would look,” the insider told Auto Express.
“It’s about product that reignites old passion, which is more difficult [with an EV] because a lot of the love for the Impreza was the noise. If you don’t concentrate on range too much, you can get good performance, but the fun factor is more difficult.”
According to the publication, any model which would revive Subaru’s performance focus wouldn’t be co-developed with Toyota, marking a new path after the brands collaborated on the 86/BRZ, the bZ4X/Solterra, the bZ4X Touring/Trailseeker and C-HR+/Uncharted.
Should Subaru choose to go electric for a new performance model, it would be doing so at an increasingly fractured time for EVs, with demand cooling and higher-end vehicles not selling at the rates once projected.
