When you grow up in a household that is filled with nothing but love for American products and treats every imported car like a tin-can beater that needed to go to the crusher years ago, it’s difficult to comprehend that import cars could ever have your respect. Hondas were cheap fuel-economy choice cars, Toyotas were bought by people who hated American cars and Subarus…well, they were just weird. And in the early 1990s, that image stuck, especially with the few Leones and XTs that still plodded around on the roads. They drove everywhere emitting a rude noise and at a slow pace to boot…what was there to appreciate?
Before the video game Gran Turismo opened the eyes of many Americans to what Asian-market cars could really do, there was World Rally racing on television. One lazy morning, while we listened to the rain continually soak our house, my stepfather and I watched as Colin McRae flung a blue and yellow Subaru Impreza through the woods with absolutely no care in the world. Power-on, the car was a snorting missile. Power-off, and the car popped, cracked and banged it’s way down while spitting flame from the exhaust. The Impreza flew, the Impreza slid, the Impreza did everything but roll over and play dead, it seemed…ok, once in a while it did that too, but you can call that “driver error” more accurately.
This started the fascination about what a Subaru could really do in my world. We didn’t get the hot Imprezas until the second generation of Impreza in the early 2000s, so watching base-model sedans toddle around while I had visions of McRae launching over a crest somewhere in Finland made the scene that much better. Imagining my hippie-ish math teacher and her wagon ripping up some trail on the Olympic Peninsula with her teal wagon was laughter-worthy. Take a listen to the real-deal cars and see for yourself what I mean.
