The Japanese racing samurai: Subaru Impreza WRX Sti

For many car enthusiasts, the Subaru Impreza WRX Sti is a matter of pride and something to aspire to. Anyone who cares about true sports cars will want a Subaru Impreza WRX Sti in their own garage. After all, this is the very car that competes in the world's WRC rally championship, where it has brought its team no shortage of titles and wins.

But let's not spend too long dressing up the Subaru Impreza WRX Sti with nice words and listing all its pros and cons — let's get straight into the technical build of the car, and start, naturally, with the "heart of the car" — its engine. This boxer engine has a working volume of just two and a half litres, yet it's capable of delivering a peak output of 280 "true thoroughbred horses." The engineers at Japan's Subaru managed to achieve that result by perfecting every part of the engine down to the smallest detail and trimming the weight of the entire piston-and-cylinder assembly, along with fitting a Garrett turbocharger. The result is a genuinely powerful and lively car, capable of winning "traffic-light drag races" while also holding its own comfortably in out-of-town traffic.

Step inside the Subaru Impreza WRX Sti's cabin, and you'll instantly feel like a genuine rally driver. That's thanks to the small, three-spoke Momo sports steering wheel, along with the racing "bucket" seats that won't let you go even under hard cornering or a severe lean. Every detail inside the cabin evokes a rally car. The speedometer and tachometer needles, for instance, sit at a right angle and sweep through an honorary "victory lap" when you turn the ignition key. In the instrument cluster, the tachometer takes centre stage, with its red zone for over-revving starting at 7,000. To its right sits the speedometer, and to its left are the fuel-level gauge and the coolant-temperature indicator.

The Subaru Impreza WRX Sti comes with a six-speed manual gearbox with excellent gate precision. This gearbox is, in essence, a genuine sports transmission with a short lever throw that instead demands decisive, deliberate inputs. Even so, you can get used to the gearbox fairly quickly, and after that, shifting gears becomes nothing but a pleasure. A sports car like this demands to be treated with special care.

We can sum up our test drive of this car with one simple conclusion. The Subaru Impreza WRX Sti is a "wolf in sheep's clothing" — for all its outward simplicity, it packs a stripped-down version of a genuine racing car underneath. Of course, this car is only for true fans of racing and adrenaline, since not everyone can put up with its stiff suspension or the engine's constant roar. But in the end, the last word is yours, since a car is often chosen not with the head, but with the heart.