(By Tom Lohnes) – The Subaru WRX STI is a legend of a car. With a cult following, multiple WRC championships, and thousands of happy owners around the world, the hopped-up WRX was always a riot to drive, while being a practical and semi-rational daily driver at the same time. Well, in an extremely shocking announcement made by Subaru this morning, the STI is not returning to the redesigned WRX lineup, and that is a crying shame.
We really do not know exactly why the STI isn’t returning. Poor sales? No, not at all. They crank on average 24,000 STIs a year out, and they have quite a good profit margin considering that it is essentially an Impreza at heart. Environmental restrictions? Maybe, but probably not. With the world beginning to shift to electric vehicles, gas-powered sports cars are becoming scarcer by the day, or at least it seems. Sure, Subaru is also subject to these changes and new restrictions on gas engines, but no engine in their entire lineup is bigger than 2.5 liters, so I really don’t think that is the cause of death either.
We may never know exactly why the WRX STI was killed, but Subaru pretty vaguely stated in their extremely short press release that we will see the name again some time in the next 5 years. With that very loose time frame, we can only expect the STI to return with batteries powering it. That is ok, because Subaru is great at developing performance vehicles, but it really is sad that we had to see the STI go so suddenly. With the redesigned WRX being a disappointment to many, we can only assume that the STI not being available is yet another deterrent.
That being said, if you want an STI, there are a few new ones left at dealerships, so snag them while you can. Order books for the new 2022 WRX are now open as well, if you want to see what could’ve been.
