My phone rings. It's rare that it does, especially when it isn't some dubious unknown number trying to spam and scam someone.
"'sup?"
"Hey Dino. I'm going to need a bit of help with this week's car."
"What is it?"
"It's... a blue car."
"Oh come on, even you're more descriptive than that!"
"That's the thing, I don't know what it is!"
"Does it have no badging? What does it say on the car?"
"Symmetrical AWD... and I'm not sure if it's the owner's idea, but... it says a bad thing on the back."
"Oh, yeah. Those've been around a long time. Several different generations and trims. Could you send a photo?"
"Of the STI?! *gasp*"
"Yeah."
"Dino, what are you asking?!"
"What?"
"I don't have...! I'm clean!"
"Oh my g- THE CAR!"
"Tsk... See, this is why you need to be a lot more professional in your mannerisms, your speech, your choice of words, and... urgh, look, can you just... open your front door?"
Oh for f...
"Please stop doing this, EsthURGGGH!", I opened the door to immediately be cut off mid sentence to shield my eyes and stumble back, as though a vampire leaving his lair in daylight. It wasn't the sunlight that stung my eyes and caused me to recoil, however. Rather, it was the monstrosity that's being unloaded onto my driveway: a... blue... car... Frankenstein... thing.
"What in the blue hell is THIS?!", I exclaimed in shock, yes, but mostly disgust: a widebody, tuner boy racer wannabe gangster mobile was being lowered down onto my driveway.
"So... you don't... know, what this is, either?", asks Esther timidly.
"I mean, I- yes of- no I mean- no. I mean, WHAT THE HELL?!"
"Lee, you're scaring me."
"I thought we at COTW review stock! Unmodified! Why this?"
"This is unmodified, apparently... I have the certification papers from the technicians of COTW right here."
A stock WRX that looks like this? Now that she insists on it, I think I'm starting to recall some funky homologation models both Subaru and Mitsubishi pumped out for the resurgence of "Group B", revived by the FIA-Gran Turismo partnership. Though, it's hard to really think of these as homologation models, seeing as these cars were never put up for sale publicly - only distributed within inner circles of the FIA-Gran Turismo and their racers. In fact, I think they called it the... uh...
The "Subaru WRX Gr. B Road Car."
And with that, I think I've hit my irony quota for this year.
Almost as attention grabbing as its bombastically flared fenders is its rally car suspension kit, true to the nature of the racing car it was meant to homologate. You wouldn't guess it however, just by looking at the spec sheets: this thing has a ground clearance of 135mm (5.31in), which is exactly the same as my bone stock Spirit R RX-7, and let me be the first to tell you that it's no All Japan Rally Car. Rather, where it has clearance is between the wheels and the fenders, which look to allow for way more suspension travel than it has ground clearance... needless to say, it's entirely stupid, and hence why I thought this was some 19 year old's toy car financed by their unbeknownst parents' credit cards than something a sensible and practical manufacturer like Subaru would've put out on the street.
Further, this car, if not for its sky scraping suspension setup, would look almost too much for a GT3 spec racing car, with fenders flared to comically bulbous levels, then lavished unsparingly with clear carbon fibre parts: Carbon fibre wing stands, skirts, the freaking window frames, interior trim, and what looks like the entire underbody as well. Many of these woefully expensive carbon parts, such as the diffuser and front lip, are perfectly poised to smash into the ground with all the weight and momentum of the car in a rally stage, which is why rally cars DON'T use carbon fibre parts, and you need look no further than the very Group B WRX that this thing homologates to find proof of this. For something that screams "RALLY!", it doesn't even come with mud guards.
Even as a poser car for some angsty, rebellious teenager seeking validation from the opposite sex, this car's looks just doesn't work. No one wearing a skirt would be able to step across the chasms between the flared fenders and side skirts, meaning this car isn't even good as a poser car. Flared fenders usually make a car look squat and poised to strike, with performance implications of a lower centre of gravity to help better cornering speeds. Yet, as previously mentioned, this thing looks like a school boy who barely was able to afford the cheapest seats in a Nickelback concert: tiptoeing, chin up, and waving its hands up in the air. The height and width of this thing just looks excessive, and it's hard to even imagine any practical application for either. The base WRX was never a looker, granted, but the body kit on this just takes it to tragically comical levels, destroying any preexisting semblance of proportion. I think the worst angle of this car is easily dead on from the rear: the overcompensating man bulge fenders look like fish gills, or knife holders, and the car almost feels castrated, plugged up, and gagged, with only one exhaust pipe, down from the FOUR of the WRX STi.
I haven't even gotten into the car yet, and I'm already suffering a migraine from this week's awful car. I'm not even done complaining yet!
Most... egregious... confounding... flabbergasting... whatever big word that means "appalling" you can find in a thesaurus to put in here, wouldn't be big enough to describe the atrocity that is the rear occupancy of this car: It retains the rear row of seats of the perfectly sensible and capable base WRX, complete with all the upholstery, amenities, and even seatbelts to allow this car to carry approximately 3.6 adult passengers in terrified comfort... except, the rear doors of this damn thing DON'T OPEN. Get this: the rear door panels are bespoke, as they are part of the GINORMOUS haunches of the rear fenders. As a result, the door handles of the rear are drowned out in the bulge, and aren't replaced. So you think, "okay, a bit of a pain in the rear, quite literally. I'll just open the front doors, bend over the side skirts and door sills and reach in from the front to-". Yeah, I'll stop you right there. The rear door handles of this "sedan" have been axed, too. What really rubs salt in the wound from the loss of the rear doors is that the bespoke rear door panels of this car are their own, separate panels, not integrated or welded shut to the rest of the B Pillar, with panel gaps big enough suggest that they open. I don't know why Subaru wouldn't just make a coupé version of the WRX, like they did with the 22B, and homologate THAT instead. Would it be too much trouble to engineer bespoke door handles for the rear in addition to the bespoke ENTIRE REAR DOOR PANEL?! And if there was never any intent for the rear doors to open, why not axe the entire rear row of seats and use the space to, oh, I don't know, mount a 6 point harness, and install a roll cage? Why, of all the more conventional, cohesive, simpler, and sensible of alternatives, was THIS the outcome?
"So... do you know what this is or not?", asks Esther.
I'm not sure what sort of twisted regulation in the homologation rules of Group B that has twisted an otherwise sensible, massively capable, everyday car that's easy to recommend anyone into this exacting monstrosity of bad teases and contradicting messages, that looks to be good for precisely NOTHING. To recap: this car's name says it's both a rally car and a road car. It's suspension travel area and aerodynamic tweaks scream rallying, but the ground clearance, and the materials its constructed out of begs for the sanity of paved roads. This car has the silhouette of a 4 door sedan, the requisite five seats, panel gaps for the rear doors, but... it has no rear door handles, making this a 2+3 coupé?. What IS this car? How would one classify and define it? What is it meant to be, what is it meant to do?
"This is...
a blue car."
*********************************************
The WRX Gr. B Road Car isn't any less confused on the track, either. The interior of this homologation car is largely left unmodified from the original STi, aside from swapping some plastic panels for carbon fibre replacements, furthering that cheap, desperate, ruined by a 19 year old look as these look almost like fake CF wraps rather than a purposefully lightened and gutted interior. The largely original interior makes the digital dash identical to the one found on the rally car SUPER conspicuous. It's surreal to see such a modern, digital dash, complete with shift lights, operated by a leather wrapped steering wheel and a stick shift. I don't know, if I had to choose between proper racing buckets and harnesses, throwing out the rear seats, or a fancy dash, the last on the list would be the lowest in priority...
It has to be said though, that visibility out of the cockpit of this modern day WRX is superb. Part of that is due to the interior being nearly identical to the road car, yes, missing roll cages and not having the seat sunk deeper into the car. I had expected a car with bulbous fender flares to be difficult to place, but it's quite easy to find the edges of the car on the track, actually. I just wouldn't want to be the valet that has to navigate a tight parking lot in this car though, let's just say.
The WRX Gr. B Road Car (THAT'S a mouthful...) behaves and handles well enough on a narrow, winding mountain circuit like Bathurst, offering tons of grip for days, with the bad road surfaces, bumps, and off camber turns barely registering through the car. Yes, it's soft and compliant, but somehow, it also manages to retain a high degree of agility and response rivaling those of sports cars, in spite of that softness and compliant setup, which is something I've always admired the Subaru wizards for. Initial bite under braking and turning of the wheel is excellent: the car feels light on its feet, and nimbler than its 1,425kg (3,142lbs) mass would suggest. For some context, it uses roughly the same braking points of my lighter and slower FD RX-7 round Bathurst, and that's really saying something.
However, try to get it to bite a little more, try to tuck in the nose a little more for a deeper apex, and the front end goes completely numb and limp from the overly soft suspension, offering no real feedback and squandering weight transfer to delays. It gives a very odd sensation, like most of the weight is wasted trying to compress the suspension rather than pressing on the wheel. I might be mistaken about this, but there was nothing at all I could do to get the car to bite into corners with deeper apexes. This means that, while the car excels at a narrow, winding mountain pass like Bathurst, it completely falls over and dies at any wide open racing tracks that has you turning across the entire width of the track to find an apex - tracks wide enough to hold 6 cars side by side. It has good enough initial response, but just doesn't follow up with trail braking, or mid corner adjustments into deeper corners. On tracks like these, the WRX Gr. B Road Car becomes an unruly, unwilling beast you need to wrestle and wrangle around every corner. You need to brake early, turn the wheel hard, and hold onto that stiff steering wheel fighting back, preparing to turn it some more and to utter some choice words in the process. It's a workout to drive this thing on a proper, paved racetrack, and one that isn't very gratifying.
Long time WRX loyalists and enthusiasts will no doubt rejoice in the fact that this car uses a highly tuned EJ207 Boxer 4 cylinder, now outputting 479PS and 542.6N-m (400.2ft-lb). That's right, this homologation car is based off the JDM Spec VA WRX, which has the old as hell- I mean, proven EJ20 Engine that has been the heart of Imprezas and WRXes since the earliest examples. This fourth gen WRX is noteworthy for being the last car to carry that engine, which was only available in its home market of Japan. Too bad it has to exhale and make its Boxer rumble through only ONE exhaust pipe in this car.
The EJ20 not only has had its peak power increased as well, but was given a WALL of torque spiking up at around what looks to be 2,000rpm, but in practice, feels more like 3,000. This wall of torque continues with almost a table top flatness until slightly tapering near the redline of 8,500rpm. This means the car bogs at launch, is completely undriveable on public roads despite the phrase "Road Car" being explicitly stated in its name, and will require slight short shifting to make the most of on the track. Thankfully, the gear ratios on this homologation car have been suitably shortened and made closer together to reflect and complement the rally focused engine characteristics. Despite not being in the car's name, this homologation car is THANKFULLY based on the STi version of the car, meaning it has a proper 6 speed manual instead of the "oh god why hath thou allowed this to happen" CVT on the base WRX. The drivetrain pairing on this car is really, really good: you can shift almost whenever and wherever, and you will ALWAYS have torque to not only get you going, but to break out the rear tyres and hold drifts as well as and when you desire - signs of a bona fide rally car. The ratios work with and hide the deficiencies of the engine really well - you won't find faults of the engine on the track unless you specifically go out of your way to look for them. I've heavily criticised many aspects of this car, but this marriage of drivetrains is one made in heaven, and whoever set it up is very clearly a professional of experience.
While strangely barred from fiddling with the torque split of the centre diff in the paddock, I could freely adjust the centre torque split from the centre console as I drove. Default torque split is a rather safe and conservative 40 Front 60 Rear, but it allows you to choose from NINE settings in increments of 5%, ranging from 10 Front, 90 Rear, to an even 50-50 split, otherwise known as "don't". On dry paved roads, I find my happy place to be 30-70, though I've had to raise it a notch to 35-65 in heavy rain. And this, I think, really says a lot about this car: out of the box, it tries to convey to you that it can do everything really well, but has had the unfortunate side effect of making itself look like a bit of a clown. It's massively capable, and has the hardware for doing impressive things, such as running circles around Group 3 homologation cars, ironically. But, for every application, it will require serious fiddling with to make it do what it can. Torque split, suspension settings, brake bias... you really need to put in the time and effort to set it up for every purpose and every event, from launch, circuit, rally, wet, or even doughnuts in a parking lot, as otherwise it will just crumble in the sad, forgettable place of "in the middle of nowhere".
Invest the time and effort into setting it up however... it will give you a sensational time that nothing else can hope to match. Nowhere is that clearer than at a rally stage.
"Lee, I know the flight connection to Italy got cancelled and you only got two races with the crew, so I thought we should arrange for more individual testing. There's this big, promising looking track in America that hardly anyone uses, but is recognised and sanctioned by FIA-GT..."
"Fisherman's Ranch?"
"Bing bong! How'd you know?"
"It's a dirt track though... I'm no rally driver, Esther."
"Come on, can't you just drive around for a few photos?"
"These cars don't rally, Esther. They'll destroy their underbodies and it'd be a nightmare to clean before returning to their owners, and besides-"
"It was a request from the owner of these cars, actually."
"What?"
"Apparently some expensive parts of the cars need replacing, and since these are rally cars, regular wear and tear on a dirt track is covered under our insurance, so..."
"Ripping a hole through the underbody of the car isn't 'regular wear and tear', Esther..."
"Tsk... Are you doubting my legal prowess? I have the signed forms right here."
"You're asking me to go out there and deliberately wreck these cars, Esther!"
"Mm hmm. The owner let us test his cars for free, with the condition that we must wreck them on a rally track so that insurance will buy him brand new replacements. You seem really good at wrecking expensive cars."
"Esther... too soon."
*giggle*
"Sounds like a totally sheet deal. How'd you get insurance to agree to it?"
"That's a trade secret!"
*sigh* "I'll give it a go."
Ploughing Fisherman's Ranch with the diffuser of an Evo X.
*SCRAAAAAPE*
We'll be right back.
Meanwhile, in Italy...
Is that... a CORVETTE?!
Group jump! Look at all these buttholes having all this fun without me!
(See Vic, the problem with being faster than light is that you can only live in complete darkness.)
Now that both cars have been destroyed, along with most of my anatomy from the lack of proper support and restraints in these cars, we can end the review, but not before I tell you how FLIPPING GLORIOUS these cars were to drive on the dirt.
I've only had a brief crash course (emphasis on "crash") in the Group B Lan Evo Rally Car to learn the track with a very British sounding instructor whose name I didn't catch, so safe it is to say that, again, I'm no rally driver. However, what I can readily tell you is that these Gr. B Road Cars offer the complete experience of the lighter and more powerful race cars. They have the assuring grip and balance, they have the same centre torque split controller, the same ability to break the rears out, the same ability to drift, and the same ability to stop well, the same short gearing, the same plateaus of torque, and the same feedback. In fact, power and mass deficiency aside, I'd argue that these Road Cars provide an experience more raw and engaging, just because you're operating three pedals and a stick you can hardly leave alone on the track, instead of the flappy paddles of the racing car.
Setting the centre differential to a suicidal looking 20-80 split, and knocking the brake bias rearwards, I soon found myself with the most exhilarating time on a track I never could've fathomed. The cars will grip for days, even on dirt, when equipped with the same dirt tyres as the racing cars. However, the rear end can be swung out on whim, even without resorting to the handbrake lever, which I can't pull in any car due to *cough* physical inability *cough*. All it takes is being sharp and sudden with either pedal and the accompanying wheel movement to get the rear out to play, and you can initiate slides with angles so ridiculous, at speeds so high in these cars, it's mind boggling to someone who only grip drives on paved roads.
These cars are so malleable as tools, as toys, and adapts to a wide range of driving styles and habits almost effortlessly, as I unwittingly tested for with my inexperience with dirt driving. The cars' responses are delightfully sharp and proportionate. What was once a wrestling act on a paved track now becomes almost like a juggling act, as you can effortlessly slide a car into and out of an apex, adjusting your grip of the steering wheel and your steering inputs several times a second as though juggling five apples with your hands and feet, all while the undulations, jumps, and loose earth work to break the car away from you. And you will feel EVERY. SINGLE. THING. that's going on with the car and road.
Yes, my lines are ugly and inconsistent as all hell. Yes, I might've broken more than the cars. But it's not everyday that you get to experience something truly new and unique, and while not under the pressure of a race or a stopwatch, I had the most fun frolicking around the dirt in these two cars, learning, exploring, all while being hit in the face with the most ridiculous, adrenaline filled fun no road or racecar has given me. I really wish FIA-GT did more with Group B and the rally tracks they sanction, perhaps renovate these dirt tracks to have a proper pit lane, because good GOD almighty this is RIDICULOUS fun!
You might have realised halfway into the review that I sneaked in an Evo Gr. B Road Car as well. That's because I find that these two cars are virtually indistinguishable from each other as far as on track performance goes. Everything I said about the WRX, applies to the Evo as well, from the stupid rear doors, understeer on wide tracks, right down to the lap times. They even share the exact same power and mass figures, and the similarities extend to even the 6 speed manual bit. That's right: you're looking at the only version of the Evo X with a 6 speed manual stick shift from the factory, though, true to the bottom of the barrel economy class cars Mitsubishi are seemingly hell bent on being known for nowadays, the engravings on the stick shift aren't updated to include a 6th forward gear, but are instead omitted entirely:
Evo X Final Edition:
Gr. B Road Car:
How are the two cars different? Well... they sound and look different... the Subie has its one exhaust on the left, and the Mitsu on the right. The coloured centre thing on the steering wheel is blue for the Subaru, and red for the Mitsubishi. They really want to make it clear that they are rivals, don't they? The Evo actually has mud guards, if only for the rear, and seems to come with AYC, though I can't even find an option to adjust it. I feel it slightly on corner exit, but it's set very mildly, if it's even there and not just my placebo. The Evo has its redline at 8,000rpm, 500 lower than that of the WRX, though, these cars are so similar that even their power curves up to that point are indistinguishable from each other's. The Evo actually comes with a third brake light in the middle, and cars missing those are a huge pet peeve for me. These two cars being nearly identical on the track means you can just pick whichever one you think looks or sounds best, or which brand you like more, and have a fair fight with the other. And that, I think, is a better outcome than being able to say one car is absolutely better than the other.
I don't even need to drive anything else to tell you that these two cars, right here, give anyone the most enthralling and comprehensive rally experience anyone can ask for. Nothing else can even fathom to come close to what these two cars can do and make you feel on dirt. It's just... for the love of all that you consider dear and holy, raise the ground clearance and swap out the expensive carbon bits for... whatever it is they use on the actual Group B cars. Trust me when I tell you that it's an experience you'll want more than once.
These two cars are both sleepers, for having the hardware and potential to be massively capable, and for being ridiculous BUCKETS of fun on dirt. It's just... I still think you really do need to be drunk, mentally challenged, high, hypnotised, and with a fresh concussion from blunt force trauma all at once to really want either car, though. It's the sort of car I wish a good friend of a friendly neighbour would have, just so I can borrow it for a bit of fun. But I don't want to have to live with it, I don't want to tolerate it on the roads, especially in an urban area. And most of all, I just don't want to be seen in something that looks as whack as either of these cars.
No comments:
Post a Comment