The history of the Subaru Impreza WRX – Part 2

As we discovered in part one, the Subaru Impreza WRX was forged from only the finest ingredients. There were keen, hungry, and smart racers, who over three decades put the brand's products through gruelling off-road events like the Safari Rally, Baja 500, and London-Sydney rally.

With their worldly experience coming together to form Subaru Tecnica International (STI) in 1988, the brand set off to dominate the world rally scene. After a patchy start, things began to pick up in 1991, with humble yet fearless Scottish rookie – Colin McRae – showing promise behind the wheel.

A more significant event would come just after however, with the launch of the all-new Subaru Impreza in 1991. Replacing the dated Subaru Leone small passenger car, it remained faithful to the recipe by featuring a longitudinally mounted, flat-four engine with the option of symmetrical all-wheel drive.

Turbocharged thrills remained too; this time called Subaru Impreza WRX. Claims of it being the beneficiary of World Rally eXperimental technology were no lie, as it featured a toned-down yet familiar version of Subaru's EJ20, 2.0-litre turbocharged flat-four engine. It arrived in Australia at the start of 1994, about 14 months after Japanese customers got their first hands on one.

Subaru Australia's operations were (and still are) run by a third-party importer called Inchcape, who, to use a modern-day cliché, knew what it had. Its opinion was quickly validated by the Aussie motoring press at the time, including us here at Drive, who waxed lyrical about the WRX after having a go. Alongside its arch rally rival, the Mitsubishi Lancer GSR, no other all-wheel drive turbo fours had offered such balance and speed out of the box.

It was still an unknown quantity to the general Aussie public, however, who'd been kept broadly satisfied by local manufacturing and its eight-cylinder wares. Subaru Australia saw the enthusiasm from both internally and from its dealer network however, and priced the first Subaru WRX at $41,990 before on-roads, some $5000 more than a contemporary Holden Commodore SS.

Despite a few snickers from the peanut gallery, the WRX's sales performance exceeded expectations, with 491 examples finding new homes in year one. The next two years saw sales grow out 344 and 358 cars respectively, despite the brand cleverly marketing the product and walking its price up to a staggering $46,990 for the special edition WRX Rallye by 1996.

By clever marketing, we mean winning in the forest.

It's no secret that the Australian outfit – led by key Aussie executive Nick Senior – loved performance cars and was keen to support its partner's global motorsport mission. By the mid-1990s, the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship had become a breeding group for world rally team development. It was a small, FIA-sanctioned series born from the WRC's expansion into Australia.

Subaru Australia helped secure a works contract for New Zealander Peter 'Possum' Bourne, who drove to victory more than once with the Subaru world rally team. Possum, first behind the wheel of a Subaru Legacy RS, then a works Impreza WRX 555, won the 1993 and 1994 events. He later drove locally with the support of Subaru Australia, taking out seven back-to-back victories from 1996 to 2002.

All in all, the local division has won 11 Australian Rally Championships and seven Australia-Pacific Rally Championships, with the last four back-to-back APRC titles secured by an Inchcape Australia IT employee who just happened to be handy behind the wheel – Cody Crocker.

These early years of local success brought respect to the Australian operation, who had its ear down on the ground in Japan. It watched the brand unveil the high-performance Subaru Impreza WRX STI, just after launching the regular WRX in Australia. Launched exclusively to the Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) in 1994, the first Impreza WRX STI was more a boutique conversion than mass-produced offering.

Subaru would send 100, complete cars from the finished pile to its STI division each month, who would turn them into high-performance factory showroom racers. Each was individually numbered out of 100 and dated with the month of production, too. The modifications that STI applied were raft, including swapping the standard engines for ones filled with fancy metallurgy and fitted with bigger turbos.

Power and torque were up from the WRX's already respectable 162kW/279Nm. The 'STI Version' made 184kW/309Nm, and the 'Type RA STI Version' (Rally Altered) 202kW/319Nm. The latter model was a stripped-out motorsport base product that debuted Subaru's first-ever adjustable electro-mechanical locking driveline – called Driver's Control Centre Differential (DCCD) – that was still used on the outgoing 2021 Subaru WRX STI.

Subaru Australia watched on as the Japanese STI division continued to build fast, and limited products. A two-door coupe version of Impreza WRX STI joined the range in 1997, which caught the eye of the local team. So much so that Subaru Australia imported one as a test-case for the Australian market.

Clearly, the marketing people were on-board, as the 1997 Subaru WRX STI Type R version is believed to have been specifically chosen for its exclusive 'Chase Yellow' hue. As the first-ever Impreza WRX STI in the country prior to ADR homologation, it was road registered under manufacturer evaluation rules, then used for promotional purposes.

That included head honcho Nick Senior driving it to the Canberra Rally in 1998, who recalled the memorable anecdote to this writer during his previous tenure at Subaru Australia. The bright yellow WRX STI drew the attention it was always going to, which helped massage the lengthy ordeal of bringing a limited number of Impreza WRX STI vehicles to Australia in 1999.

Like the yellow head office special, Subaru first imported 400 Impreza WRX STI Version V (5) coupes. The crowd went wild, with the full allocation selling rather swiftly for $60,000 before on-roads. With Australia's collective thirst clearly not quenched, Subaru doubled down and brought in another 400 cars, this time an improved Impreza WRX STI version VI (6) model in four-door sedan body type. Unsurprisingly, they all sold out too.

By now, the Subaru WRX nameplate had established itself as a dominant force in the Australian performance market. Sales grew exponentially, from 358 in 1996, to 1740 in 1997, then a huge 3056 by 1998. By 1999, Subaru was selling well over 4000 WRX-badged products a year.

As some trivia, a total of 10,214 WRX STIs were sold in Australia between 1994 and 2020, compared to 49,610 WRXs. On average since launch, the WRX STI has made up 17 per cent of the split, with its highest-ever share coming in 2020, when 34.8 per cent of all high-performance Subarus sold wore the famed three-letter acronym.

Another year that comes close is 2008, when the hatchback STI version launched. It boosted popularity, as STIs made up 30 per cent of the mix back then too.

Our love for the product is no better reflected in how in 1999, Subaru Australia managed to secure five examples of the circa 424 examples in total of the Subaru Impreza WRX STI 22b homologation specials for our market. At a cost of $125,000, or $215,239 today according to the Reserve Bank of Australia's inflation calculator, the brand sold four and kept one in its collection.

Subaru Australia has since gone on to sell over 50,000 WRXs in Australia, proving the legacy to be enduring. Along the way, the brand has launched over 20 special edition versions, made the STI a permanent fixture, and won more rallies – this time the Australian Rally Championship with Molly Taylor entering the record books as the first woman to win the prestigious ARC, as well as the youngest regardless of gender.

MORE: The history of the Subaru Impreza WRX – Part 1