In latest Autocar they have a picture of RB5 and a few more details. There is going to be the usual stuff that people have discussed including qiuck shift. There will be a 215 bhp version costing £24995 and there will be a 238 bhp version costing £27545. It does not say how they have got the extra power, does any body know ???

Prodrive have played with the engine, thats where the quoted power difference comes from.

£27545? I'd have a STi Ver. V saloon any day and use the change to buy a new exhaust, air-filter, lights and hi-fi; or Leda suspension; or brake upgrade; or......

Slowdrive? Er, no thanks. Not at that price.

I don't reckon Slowdrive do anything to the engine at all. They probably know, as we do, that the car produces 238bhp out of the box and just take your money.

Not wanting to sound like a Prodrive rep http://bbs.sidc.co.uk/smile.gif

Until we have actually seen a car equipped with the new conversion, perhaps we should wait before judging??? The pre98 conversion made a huge difference to the car, we know of a couple of people who had problems with the 98 kit, i am sure they did not only sell 2 kits for the 98, i would think they have learned a lesson and may surprise people. We can only hope so, remember the quoted power for the original car is by Subaru (215) and they (Prodrive) have quoted higher, is the difference going to be put on top of the original power (215 or what the car is actually producing, we dont know) ??? we will have to wait and see.

Forgot to add, the price is another subject though http://bbs.sidc.co.uk/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by Ian Cook (edited 24-03-99).]

[This message has been edited by Ian Cook (edited 25-03-99).]

I wonder why Prodrive doesn't offer an engine performance package where they swap the engine for an STi engine. This will justify the prices they are now charging for their engine upgrade.
In Japan, the Prodrive suspension kit is available as a dealer-fitted accessory for the STi. I suspect Prodrive have a hand in developing the STi engines.

Ian is being characteristically generous!
After all his MY99 with Scooby sport bits running on Normal Unleaded is producing 10BHP more than the Prodrive effort quoted for the RB5

[This message has been edited by Anders (edited 25-03-99).]

Having seen the photo in Autocar, I feel Subaru have missed the boat with regards to supplying a car that could possibly take on Mitsubishi's EVO6. It's another half hearted attempt by IM to raise the spec of the UK export car. Surely it would be more cost effective to take a leaf out of Ralliart's book and import the full blown STI cars we all want. I'm affraid my old Ver 5 type R won't be for sale after seeing the picture and reading the spec. One good point about the RB5 is the colour, though I'm not sure which sounds best blue steel or cool grey metallic.

Still, maybe next year!

Hear Hear!

The range should read for UK cars

Impreza 2.0 SPORT awd 150bhp (lets close the range gap here!)
Impreza Turbo 2000 awd 230bhp (not the alleged 208!)
Impreza Turbo 2000 awd WRX 280bhp
Impreza Turbo 2000 awd WRX STi 280bhp

All in 4dr and 5 dr with the STi available as 2dr coupe.

They would sell a hell of a lot of cars then! and for the price of the RB5, I would get an import, and ,mayber even try and strecth to an STi V!

The thing is IM have no problem selling the number of cars they are bringing in ! Until the import quotas and stupid restrictions are altered there is not a great deal they can do i suspect, the coupes will require crash testing and various other tests before they could be sold here as official cars, as the 2 doors have never been through this in Europe. I fthe demand on the Standard Impreza was not so high, they could probably bring in other cars, but as they cannot meet the demand now, bringing in Imports is not going to make any difference, other than providing STi's instead of standard cars. They would have to trade one for the other. Not everybody wants an STi, so then they would get complaints about delivery on UK cars even more. The only answer to this is to scrap the import quotas and give them free reign, or they build a factory here.

There is actually a 155ps Impreza in Japan, it called the SRX and it's the Jap version of our Sport but with a 4-cam 16v 2 litre engine.
Jugding by the number of demo Impreza GLs and Legacys lurking around dealerships, it would seem to me that those cars are not shifting, and anyway, by far the best selling version of the Impreza mix is the turbo. I bet some of those would have taken the WRX or STi if given the choice. I would also think that crash testing the 2-door would not be much of a problem as it's homologated for the US market, which has strict passive safety standards.
IM can actually work around the import quotas by doing the Mitsubishi way - asking Prodrive to handle the sales as personal imports. But then their engine upgrades won't shift.