I'm sure a lot of you have seen it, but it makes interesting reading.

 

Says it all really

 

There's a mistake in that Autocar feature surprise surprise.....

The Impreza was not an Impreza WRX but a regular Turbo 2000AWD.

Oh and by the way guys.....Notice that the scoob which scoops the award was an Est...5dr..hat..Wagon!!!

Proud owner of an Estate Scoob with roof bars!!

 

Point of order.....Down Under, 'our' Impreza Turbo 2000 is the Impreza WRX.
I thank you.
Gav (MY00 4-dr 555 bleu arriving soon in Holland :-))))))))

 

Correct me if I am wrong but this looks like a reprint from a UK atricle that ran last year. It was later found that the Elise used was badly set up after previously being involved in an accident (according to my elise owning friend)

This article was available from Subaru garrages, I did have a copy., i will have a look at home....

Dave.

 

Does anyone agree with me that this article was an anomaly for Autocar. That it was one of the few, if only, articles objectively observing the handling dynamics of different chassis in specific conditions.
What was so interesting about the article was that it did not only look at the concept of absolute speed around corners, but just as importantly the concept of safe balance into, through and out of different types of bends- wet and dry.
Why is it that Autocar have never again done another article like this? Could it be that too many advertising dollars would vanish?
Last, wouldn't it be amazing to see an article done this way again, with more 4WD cars- Impreza vs Evo 6 vs Audi UrQ vs Skyline. Surly each car would show up specific strenths and weaknesses, no?

 

Maybe so gav, but the article was written in GB testing a UK car where it is not known as the WRX, but the Impreza Turbo 2000AWD, as per the photo of the tailgate in the same article.

I agree with you Jeremy, that was one of the best pieces Autocar have ever written, can you imagine what it would be like if they tested the Impreza again now against the evo etc.... I can see it now, The impreza understeers..understeers, understeers....Maybe someone should tell Autocar to try turning the car on the brakes. It's not necessarily a flaw with the car but with the driver. There's clearly an acquired knack to driving the Impreza fast. Like all the best things in life, the Impreza too is an aquired taste which is probably what makes the car so characterful, unlike the plasticky, surgical -your gran can drive it fast- derivatives.

A properly conducted test would be interesting though, using drivers used to each respective car as well as a benchmark driver perhaps to make the tests as objective as possible.

What happened to the handling test carried out at Mira by Mike Nunan & co. I was looking forward to the results of this but never saw any?

 

GranT,
This is yet another issue that mags simply don't put the effort forth for, that of making sure cars are in the kind of condition necessary to handle well. Mags mostly don't have the time or money or enough interest to go through the motions of privately checking each car. Now I know that doing this for most tests would be overkill, but at least for specific handling tests it should be manditory.
Its like watching the olimpics and hearing later that one athelete had a broken ankle, another torn ligaments, and another a broken toe. Pretty much useless.

 

I don't think the article was that bad really. The Elise, I can believe, was badly set up as although they do suffer from lift off oversteer it's not that violent, but the rest of it is pretty much what I would have predicted. Nice to see a BMW getting caned anyway - mey be someone should show it to Top Gear.

Regards,

tiggers

 

It's an old article, I have the Autocar magazine from sometime in late '98. It'd still be the same result today though.