It’s easy to define the WRX by what it is not: Dead. After all, it is impressive that Subaru has not jettisoned this turbo-manual-AWD sedan as every other carmaker carries on with waves upon waves of midsize crossovers. Subaru isn’t even that big of a company. It’s remarkable dedication that the WRX exists at all, let alone that it has three pedals and a boxer engine to this day. But that’s not fair to the WRX, particularly to the tuner-ready TR.
But again, it is easy to shortchange this thing. Most of what me and Road & Track contributor (and JDM Subaru owner) Tim Stevens talked about on our drive around Sicily’s mountain roads had to do with the air over its head. There’s very clearly room for an STI above this car. It has no rear limited-slip diff. You can’t pull off handbrake turns as the viscous center diff would lock all four wheels.
This is reductive.
It’s better to see the WRX TR for what it is. This is still a practical four-door machine, with a nice infotainment screen and emergency braking (new for 2024 on manual cars), good seats (again, it’s new for 2024 that you can get the good Recaros with a manual transmission), and room for five. And it is also instantly exciting, instantly thrilling. Get into the WRX TR and so quickly you dip into boost, hearing a little whoosh of the turbo and a little growl in the exhaust. Let off the gas in a tunnel and you will hear the exhaust crackle. In something like a Jaguar or a Mercedes it feels fake. Put upon. In the WRX it feels strangely appropriate. Allowed.
And on a genuinely tricky, dangerous road, the WRX TR is easy to drive fast, for a long time. The TR is stiffer than a regular WRX but only by 5%, says Subaru. The ride is still good, especially when the road deteriorates. Here in Sicily that means real deterioration. An American Department of Transportation probably would have shut our stretch of road down, in so many places was it rutted, potholed, heaved, or altogether washed out. This is not a question of simply having all-wheel drive or not. The TR runs 245/35R19 Bridgestone Potenza S007s, tires that Subaru was proud to point out were original equipment on the Ferrari F12berlinetta and Aston Martin DB11. Looking past the flip-flapping windshield wipers, I am not sure I wanted high-performance summer tires, the road beneath us so slippery we could hardly stand up straight. But the TR was so accommodating. So clear with you. It was so easy to not only hear the front tires starting to scuff and scrub, but feel it, too. Subaru tweaked the electronic power steering for the TR “for more feel,” but couldn’t quite clarify what exactly it changed. The tires probably do the bulk of the work, and the electronic power steering is altered to keep up.
This does come at a cost, but I don’t know how critical that will be for our kind of crowd. The TR gets you the good seats, the manual transmission, nice tuning, and it’s not stripped way down like the old TR models that came with a steering wheel, a turbo, and not much else. The enthusiast crowd has changed since the tuner days of the early Aughts. “They want the good tires, they want the good brakes, they want the infotainment, they want everything,” Subaru’s Todd Hill told us assembled media on the shores of Cefalù, “and they’ll go from there.”
A manual WRX Limited starts at $39,015, an automatic GT (with the nice Recaros) starts at $44,215, and the TR gets by at $41,655. That is a big step up from a base manual WRX at $32,735, but I don’t know how far I’d go for a good set of seats. Is it all worth it? Could I see myself spending north of 40 grand for a WRX? I don’t know. But I don’t know if I could see myself dropping that kind of money on any of its similarly-priced competitors, either. A Toyota GR Corolla is in the same league depending on trim and is a sharper instrument on a back road, but it makes the Subaru seem luxurious inside, and that is saying something.
The power is great on roads like this. This current generation of WRX has a truck-like quality to its drivetrain. Though it makes 271 horsepower at 5600 RPM, it’s the 258 lb-ft of torque down from 2000 RPM that dominates the experience. It is a grunty car. The TR doesn’t change those figures, it just makes them more readily used.
While we are talking about specs, this car weighs 3,430 pounds, an almost perfect match to the less hardcore Limited trim. The wheels, tires, and upsized Brembos on the TR add weight. Subaru took out the moonroof on the TR to get it back. You get a little extra headroom for a helmet, too, which is nice for our kind of crowd. It’s the way that the WRX TR is tuned, though, that does some sort of magic to it. This doesn’t feel like a big car, or a heavy one, even getting out of a BRZ.
It’s the sense of a car that every time you get into it, it reminds you how it’s special. Its sound, its power, its character.
Even against a full crop of newcomers in its field – the GR Corolla, the Honda Civic Type R, a whole host of nouveau sport compact cars like the Audi S3 and the Golf R – it’s the WRX that I can see myself with in 20 years. I like that Subaru seems to feel the same way.
Road & Track's Deputy Editor who once got a Dakar-winning race truck stuck in a sand dune, and rolled a Baja Bug off an icy New York road, and went flying off Mount Washington in a Nissan 240SX rally car, and...
