“I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Despite our best intentions we all have a little Mr. Hyde in us and nothing brings it out like driving. My wife Debbie is the sweetest person on earth, but when she’s behind the wheel her Hyde can be revealed by the most minor and unintentional automotive slight. That’s how my kids learned to swear when they were still in booster seats.
My Mr. Hyde takes a slightly different form. Normally I’m fairly cautious and conservative behind the wheel, but put me on a rural twisting two-lane and my Hyde imagines himself a world class rally driver. For the past twelve years I’ve been living out my fantasies in a 2004 Subaru WRX wagon. Luckily, it’s also a car my inner Jekyll can appreciate.
Jekyll – The WRX is a small but practical family wagon. There’s enough room in the back seat for a young family. With the 60/40 split fold down rear seats and optional roof rack for the Thule box, cargo space is maximized. The 2.0-liter engine returns good, not great, mileage.
Hyde – The WRX uses a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder boxer engine making 227 horsepower with 217 lb. ft. of torque. The turbo boost is 13.5 lbs., but you won’t feel it until about 3,000 rpm so slam your foot on the drilled aluminum alloy go pedal. You’ll be spending a lot of time between 3,000 and 6,000 rpm as you actively work the five speed manual.
Jekyll –Full-time AWD keeps us safe in the Winter and assures we always get where we’re going.
Hyde – Sport-tuned fully independent suspension and a limited slip rear differential means grip you can use, baby.
Jekyll – The black dimpled seat material is ugly but durable.
Hyde – Incredibly supportive bolstered front seats.
Jekyll – A six-disc CD player.
Hyde – The tachometer is front and center like a proper sports car.
Jekyll – 5 mph impact absorbing bumpers!
Hyde – MOMO leather-wrapped steering wheel!
Jekyll – Brembo brakes with ABS.
Hyde – Brembo brakes with ABS.
Living in New England in the 1970’s gave me a front row seat at the birth of Subaru culture in the United States. Subaru gained a reputation for being funky, practical and durable (eventually) and it appealed to a certain type of individual like my friend Kathi. She won her first Subaru – a red 1600 GL AWD wagon – as a prize in the Vermont Miss USA pageant. The car was funky and practical if not yet durable.
Nonetheless it was an early harbinger of where Subaru was headed in the United States.
Fast forward to the year 2000 or so. I had slowly become aware of the success Subaru had been experiencing for several years in the World Rally Championships using a modified Impreza they called the WRX (World Rally eXperimental). Capitalizing on its racing success, Subaru introduced a rally inspired Impreza WRX model to much of the World (an entirely different type of Subaru), but it was not sold in the United States. The US automotive press began clamoring for Subaru to give us the WRX and in 2002 Subaru finally complied. The car was an instant success and I wanted one. It rang all my bells. Rally heritage and handling, and a wagon option to boot. In 2004 I took the plunge and bought the second new car of my life.
Twelve years and 170,000 miles later I still have it. For most of those years it was my daily driver and our family’s default vehicle for long trips. It logged a lot of round trips between our home in Maryland and Ohio (visiting family) as well as many Vermont trips (skiing in the winter, hiking and biking in the summer). It’s now my older son Josh’s daily driver and virtually as reliable today as it was a decade ago.
So what’s it like to drive? It’s an incredibly capable sports wagon that accelerates faster and handles better than the super cars of my youth, but still with the overall refinement of a 1977 Subaru Brat. If it weren’t for the performance and sport-tuned exhaust, you might assume the engine and transmission were sourced from a tractor. Don’t get me wrong, I like it a lot. Around town it’s the closest thing I’ve ever owned to a pickup and the perfect family transporter, but under the right circumstances it becomes a different creature entirely.
It was late winter, 2005. I had been traveling all week and flew home on Friday evening arriving at the airport around 11 PM. My wife and kids met me at the airport and I took the wheel for the all night drive to Vermont. At 6 AM the next morning I made the left hand turn off of Route 4 near Killington onto Vermont Route 100 for the final forty-mile leg to Sugarbush. My wife and older son remained asleep but my younger son Peter, 11 at the time, had just awakened and would be an active participant in the upcoming adventure. I’ve driven this winding and lightly traveled stretch many dozens of times and every turn has been logged in my DNA. Formerly fatigued, I suddenly felt infused with energy – Hyde took over. We didn’t see another car for the entire stint.
Let’s just say the drive was unconstrained and enjoyable.
That’s the duality of the WRX experience – some days it’s all Jekyll…
… and other days it’s all Hyde.
Last Week – 1995 Mazda MX-3 – Sometimes The Right Car Just Finds You, Meet Lillian I and Lillian II
Next Week – “In 522 miles turn right.“
Jekyll: Christian Edstrom – the cool voice of experience.
Hyde: Travis Pastrana – totally stoked by the ‘ride’.
Great video, enjoying your stories Michael.
Off the subject, Michael, is the lovely tandem on top a Schwinn Paramount? I can’t quite make it out.
Good eye, Ron. It’s a 1979 Schwinn Paramount.
Steel is good. You should do a CC on that bike.
Can you say Phil Wood disc brake with asbestos pads?
I’ve certainly enjoyed reading about your cars, and appreciate that you keep them around and enjoy them. I noticed the Paramount in the lead photo, and wonder what other bikes you might have. When you’re done with the cars, maybe you can do a BOAL series.
Glad to hear it has been reliable enough for you to be driven by a child who was likely in booster seats when you bought it.
My 1st ride in a Subaru was about 40 years ago in a car like that red GL wagon, I never dreamed that car and Subaru would grow to become a rallying icon or produce cars like the SVX and Tribeca.
I had an early Subaru as well. I don’t know if you caught my earlier COAL on it.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1969-subaru-360/
314,861 miles….
Three timing belts and a pair of head gaskets later…. 🙂
What a great car! So nice to see an older WRX that hasn’t been abused, stanced or wrapped around a telephone pole.
Nice. That makes me more comfortable that there won’t be something unexpected in the near term that would cause me to consider repair versus end of life. I did the timing belt at 100,000, of course and clutch at 140,000 or so.
My only real unexpected issue was back in the low 40,000’s when a bad ECU fried something electronic related to the turbo. That was a couple of grand. I probably should have pressed for it to be warranty harder. The dealer accused me of flashing the ECU, but I’ve never flashed in my life!
I’ll probably get the car repainted in the next couple of years. No rust issues to-date, though.
In many ways I believe the WRX could be the BMW 2002 of its era except for two issues. You’ve identified the first which is that so many cars are modified to radically (not that there’s anything wrong with that). The second is that, because the WRX is relatively less expensive compared to, say, a contemporary 3 series BMW the second, third and fourth owners are more likely to be of more modest means and unfortunately therefore less likely to make the investments necessary to keep the cars fully up to snuff.
Our current Subie is at the other end of the spectrum. ’05 Forester with 94K. We bought it in 2012 with just 27K.
Michael, at this point I’d set aside a few bucks for a possible turbo replacement. 170K is very impressive, but they do eventually wear out. 150K seems to be about average for one that’s been well cared for and either stock or modestly boosted.
A car I lusted for, and still do. When we bought our Forester in 2000, it wasn’t out yet, but Subie love was running high.
Actually, I did test drive (and reviewed for TTAC) a Forester XT (turbo) which is largely a WRX in Forester disguise. Wow; what a ball that was to drive. The Forester XT was actually a bit faster-accelerating than the WRX, due to a lower final drive, but that put the revs awfully high on the freeway.
Anyway, when I bought my xB back in 2007, I thought about getting a used WRX wagon, but finding one that hadn’t already been put through the wringer was going to be difficult. But there’s no doubt I would have been very happy with one, and I still regret not looking harder whenever I see one on the road. The later WRXs just don’t do it for me.
Contemporary Subie’s are definitely less funky and more mainstream. As a company Subaru is approaching a tipping point and needs to make a decision – go mainstream or maintain a niche position in the market. Toyota (which now owns 16.5% of Fuji Heavy Industries) is a risk as well as moving forward they make begin to exert more influence.
The good news is Subaru continues to mine new niches, the most recent example being the XV Crosstrek (which has recently shortened its middle name to just Crosstrek). I think these are sharp looking cars and would benefit from the WRX treatment the Impreza got back in the day.
We took a close look at the Crosstek when we were buying a new car two years ago. But its cargo area was just too small for our big dog; not a genuine wagon like the old Impreza/WRX.
What’s fascinating is that the Subaru turbo engines seem to be immune to the inevitable head gasket failures of the 2.5 L NA engine. Apparently there are some key differences to account for that, but why Subaru didn’t incorporate them for so absurdly long is a big question. Our Forester was unusual in going 170k miles before the gaskets went.
I agree with you on the space issue with the Crosstrek. Space is the reason I didn’t look at the Mazda CX-3 last year.
Agreed on the cargo space for the XV/current Impreza hatch. Just checked the specs to confirm my impressions, the current car has same overall length (well +5mm) but a 120mm longer wheelbase than 2004. Also in 2004 the sedan and wagon (always referred to as a hatch here) were the same length but now the sedan is 165mm longer than what is definitely a hatch not a wagon. I suppose Subaru would just say get the Forester.
Interesting article, I had a ride through a rally stage in a Forester GT a few years back that impressed me mainly for not scraping anything on the very undulating track as well as the speed.
IIUC the 2.5 L engines are not at all related to the smaller engines in the Forester/Impreza (nor for that matter to the H6s which are essentially the smaller engine with 2 extra cylinders grafted on). Note that the 2.5s have timing belts while the 2.0s and 3.0s have chains.
I have been around for nearly 50 years, and have been driving for 33 years, and somehow have never driven, or even ridden in, a Subaru. Hell, I’ve ridden in a RHD Rolls Royce Silver Cloud, a Studebaker Avanti, a Renault LeCar and a 78-80 Ford Fiesta but never a Subie. I’ve driven all sorts of Mercedes and Porsches from the 60s to 2000s, but have never been behind the wheel of a Subie.
I also didn’t notice that the bike was a tandem until someone else pointed it out…wasn’t even looking.
Here’s my Porsche/Subaru story. I have a ’68 912 by the way in case you haven’t read my earlier COAL’s.
I was at the Summit Point racetrack to watch a 24 hours of Lemons race on the Shenandoah circuit. Summit Point was simultaneously hosting a Hyperfest which includes drifting and burnout events – not really my thing, though. However as part of the Hyperfest – off playing in the woods – were a couple dozen rally drivers. It turned out you could ride-a-long for a $10 donation to a charity. I immediately got in line.
Folks were talking to one another and we discovered that everyone in line had a WRX. Like a bunch of young fathers they all pulled out their phones and began sharing baby photos of their Subarus!
Of the dozen or so cars you could ride with only a couple were Subie’s. There were several Fiesta’s I believe and some rabbits as well. I felt bad for these drivers as they would pull up, but no one wanted to get in with them. Everyone in line was waiting to ride in a Subie and wouldn’t accept anything else. Fourth or fifth in line, I was initially leaning the same way until the red ’68 911 pulled up. I jumped the line and hopped in.
The ride in the woods was wild. It was liberating to see someone pushing a car in its mid-forties so hard in such an unforgiving environment – those trees were everywhere.
It turned out the driver had a business in Georgia building engines and race prepping Porsches. He was also an old-time SCCA racer who had raced with P.L. Newman back in the day.
My first ride in a Subie was memorable. We drove from campus in extreme northern New York to the Adirondacks, and the Subie hit 100,000 miles on the way there. I didn’t get to ride back to school with him that day though. I dislocated my kneecap halfway up Giant Mountain and spent the next 5 days or so in the hospital in Saranac Lake.
I came close to buying a Subie Gravel Express which is the earlier Imprezza wagon WRX with lift kit but it was auto and I couldnt find a manual version, the WRX ruled gravel rallying for quite a while started by a Kiwi, one Possum Bourne way back in the 80s in a Leonie but for tarmac competition Citroen Xsaras blew them away in the late 90s and I have one of those.
What a sad day for motorsport when Possum Bourne died.
What a cool ride in the night. If my wife would sleep in the car I’d have more fun as well. She and the boys slept once. We were arriving at the Frankfurt Airport. The rental company put us in VW Passat TDI Variant. On the autobahn I took it all the way to 235 km/h with the family sound asleep.
An alternative is leaving the wife at home. During the last visit to Germany we got a SEAT Leon, gasoline engine. I had my younger son accompany me to visit a friend who lives up in the Black Forest. I took the scenic route. It was a very tight County road tracing the contours of the mountains. A road that was ingrained into my memory from my youth. I could sense my son’s tension rise and the eyes widen. I felt like you did: invigorated.
Nice car, you already know that I was wondering if one of these would be in your collection sooner or later. I looked at these many times early on and finally ended up with the Saabaru back in ’06 as written up in my own COAL but only due to the GM discounts offered at the time, otherwise it may well have been the actual WRX. I’m glad yours is running strong and earning its keep, thanks for the story.
I (and several others that were on the Audi S-Car list forum) at the time found it interesting that the HP figure for the WRX was the same as the original S4/S6 cars at 227. Torque was lower but as an completely unrelated aside I seem to notice a fair number of cars these days that seem to have the same torque figure as those old I-5 turbos, being 258 lb-ft. I wonder if it translates over to an even figure in a metric equivalent or something but either way it’s not an uncommon number.
In regard to the last point, 258 lb-ft is 350 N-m, so I think your supposition is correct.
Jim,
Do you and your family still own the Saabaru, and did you give it to one of your kids?
Nope, I sold it within a year for a profit. It was a good car though, I’d have one again.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/uncategorized/coal-2005-saab-9-2x-aero-i-prefer-my-sushi-with-a-side-of-lingonberry-sauce/