2022 Subaru WRX | Review, Dyno, Reality Check

[Music] do [Music] [Applause] inside the 2022 subaru wrx if you've ever gotten into a modern subaru you're going to feel right at home with this thing from the plastics to the dash design to the interior electronics feels like a corporate modern subaru and honestly that's not a bad thing at least when it comes to the dash layout because of how low it is there's a ton of interior glass which means you have minimal blind spots this car is grown versus the vehicle replaces which means the interior space is bigger and you have an even more usable trunk the rear seats fold down and you can fit like a mountain bike back there the back seats are also pretty comfortable despite losing a little bit of headroom a full-size adult should fit back there with no issues the front seats are totally redesigned the tracks have more movement in them so they can go further back or forward and the seat design is entirely new they've changed the internal seat construction and you have three different seat options you have a all cloth or a alcantara on cloth version and you have the recaro seat which i've never been in and i have no idea what that thing's like when it comes to the seating position you sit up pretty high in this car honestly you can't get it that low and the seats themselves lack adjustable lumbar support when it comes to the rest of the ergonomics of this cabin it's mostly good the pedal box is easy to heel toe the steering wheel doesn't feel like a total turd and the shifter falls right to hand not to mention the fact that you have a physical e-brake which is wonderful really the only con when it comes to the interior ergonomics is kind of a weird complaint but it's the armrests the center armrest feels like a total piece of crap it's really hard and if you are a shorter driver you can't use it anyway because it's so far back and if you are a taller driver the door armrest and the center console armrests are not at the same height which is really frustrating from an ocd perspective now when it comes to the interior electronics that's the other big controversy of this car other than the way it looks of course they have now gone to the corporate giant tablet for all trims higher than a premium so the premium limited and gt all get this giant center tablet the base model and again i've not used the base model screen comes with a dual screen the tablet at least for the most part works pretty well it's far better than something like the vw infotainment system you still have physical controls for things like volume and the basic hvac controls but the fan speed and heated seat controls are built in the infotainment system the screen quality is average at best but it reacts pretty quickly and unlike other generations of this technology it does not seem to be as affected by cold weather apple carplay also works pretty well when it comes to the audio system i know nobody cares in a wrx but in short it's not great it's definitely not going to win any awards if you compare it to the standard bose in a mazda 3 or civic si this leaves a lot to be desired but with all that said i think it's time for us to head into the shop and put this thing up on the lift so mark we're underneath the 2022 wrx and before we talk about anything else i think it's time for us to talk about the elephant man in the room the styling oh yeah that's right the styling so i told our subaru reps i'm like look we're not going to focus too much on this because it doesn't matter if this car was perfect people are still going to talk about 90 of the comments are about how hideous this thing is i've never been a subaru like fnatic i've never owned a wrx but i know where people are coming from when you make changes this is the thing the wrx has never been the most beautiful car traditionally beautiful car it has always been quirky awkward styling they go from bulbous and then they go back to like conservative and people complain about that and then they go back to aggressive and now they're kind of following that suv cuv trend where it's a little bit more rugged and i'm just going to leave it at that this is not a car that you're going to look back at and be like oh my god it's just this beautiful car and it was never designed to be that way from the get-go it's never been a traditionally pretty car however you're gonna tell me a little bit why they have some of this unpainted material and the science or engineering behind some of it so thankfully for this loan subaru provided us with a lot of technical support through their reps and they gave me a couple reasons behind this styling or a couple i guess excuses the first thing is most wrx owners according to their focus groups always want their cards to be more aggressive looking and well this is what you get it's more aggressive looking so here you go yeah you got what you asked for the second thing is that every single time they release one of these cars people freak out every generation is apparently more ugly or more boring looking than the prior generation vehicle they think you'll get over it and that's up to you to get over it or not they think you'll get over it based on how it drives that was a big point and the last thing is this is actually functional all this unpainted black plastic on the rear diffuser on the side skirts and on the front of this car has a hexagonal pattern on it which is more aerodynamic it helps reduce wind turbulence which in turn will make this more aero stable at high speeds particularly around the sides of this vehicle and translate less wind noise into the cabin the other thing they've done is extended all the aero panels underneath this car which again reduces nvh it's a quieter car because of it and theoretically at least it's more aerostable at high speeds and they do that in multiple ways underneath as well the hexagonal shape is only here really in a small portion of it but there are different lips and different contours of these plastic trays that help smooth out airflow direct airflow over the elongated panels and it's one of the smoothest air flows exiting the back of the car which again increases stability aerodynamically and you could make this huge argument on an enthusiast car like this at this price point we're not talking about a race car here so they have chosen this over some of the appearance part and i think the appearance part is more important to most of these people in the demographic but time will tell jack so the other thing to talk about is all of the improvements to the suspension architecture and really the platform itself so this is on the most recent version of subaru's global platform which means it has a bunch of manufacturing improvements more high strength steel the welding process has changed and more adhesives which means this car is more rigid which should increase the handling performance of this car and it is much quieter plus it is safer and they changed something in their manufacturing process mark yes they did and this is learned from other models in their lineup like forrester etc so as they make improvements they figure out oh how can we do things better and easier while adding more welds more adhesive so like in the impreza they're seven meters of structural adhesive now there's 26 in this car the other part is welding processes they're able to get more robots in during the body and white welding process before they attach hang on panels or welded panels onto the back you're going to see some of these videos but again it's about that improvement and all of that equates to what so this car is bigger than it used to be but despite being bigger and more rigid and having more nvh material it has not gained much more weight and in some triple trim levels it's lighter than the prior generation vehicle now let's talk about the suspension so in the front mark they went to a different steering system it's a dual pinion steering rack so they've moved the motor off the where the torque sensor is so the motor is now moved to the side of the rack so the torque sensor is looking at wheel input and how much torque is there and then it can send the signal to the motor and by moving the motor over here the power or the the force is distributed across the rack versus just on that input point so when you turn a little bit there's no power dip when you turn it initially you feel smooth when you turn it harder it feels smooth and there's no like dip or ramp and a lot of manufacturers or suppliers are moving their motors off that center point to the side of the rack so this is nothing new but it's new for subaru so in theory at least this should feel like a more natural steering setup it should have more natural initial turn-in the other thing they've done to increase front-end feel is they've changed the offset of the wheels themselves they're slightly more aggressive which would lead to theoretically better turning and better high speed stability the suspension setup has also been revised the the dampers themselves now have more stroke in them they have more travel which means they should ride a little bit better they're a little bit more compliant like you get in like a cv or suv but in the front they've included assist springs in the dampers themselves to help control rebound a little bit better and you want to explain that yeah so when you increase wheel travel that means that wheel is compressing and then you have to have the shock rebounded so that rebounding force goes up and on a performance car like a traditional cv suv you can have a more floaty ride but they need more body control so you'd have to ramp up the rebound rates of the shocks where you get this like jolty effect as it's rebounding so the way that they can offset that is to have an assist spring inside the shock that offloads some of that rebound valving you can have that shock rebound from the spring and then take over the valving so the concept is you still get a sporty ride but you're getting a smoother ride with more wheel travel and you know this is the way subaru decided to do it up front the two things i want to talk about really quick mark before we get underneath the hood is the rear sway bar design and that comes from this global platform you want to talk about that the rear subframe is different here because it is mounted closer to the chassis it's bolted up to the subframe part where it mounts up to the body not on the center part or on the inner part of the subframe and one of the benefits of doing it this way is they can use softer bushings in the subsequent suspension points or the subsequent mounting points and in a traditional setup there's a lot of flex or deflection in the subframe itself because that sway bars always has this counteracting force of twisting force so moving it up to the body reduces that and they can use softer bushings which then in turn in turn results into a softer more compliant ride translation the car has better ride quality and it still maintains its body control fairly well the rear suspensions multi-link a lot of the improvements in the front made it to the rear of this car but the big story is the all-wheel drive setups of this vehicle you have two different all-wheel drive systems one for the manual which is a 50 50 viscous system it's very similar to other subarus and has torque vectoring by brake and then you have a cvt all-wheel drive system you want to talk about that a little bit yeah so the torque vectoring by brake is all four corners of the car the subaru performance transmission that's what they've rebranded their cvt to and they're still a belt there's a steel belt in here with the pulleys that adjust themselves but the internal pumps the internal design allows it to feel more like a traditional torque converted automatic while still giving you the benefits of a cvt so in automatic mode it's trying to keep that the engine in the preferred zone for fuel economy smoothness you don't get a bunch of gear shock or fake gear shock but when you want to take over manual control again those shifts are way more natural and less rubber bandy than those old cvts now the concept is maybe also that it's going to be more reliable it shouldn't be feeling as shitty as some of the other ones and that's what they decided to do here versus a torque converted but they're they're both made in-house inside subaru they've been developed internally cbt and manual and the cvt also gets a different power split for the all-wheel drive system it's 55 rear 45 front but mark with that i think it's time for us to get underneath the hood [Music] now that we're under the hood we're looking at subaru's new global engine family the 2.4 liter this has a turbo however and there are some big differences between this and some of the other 2.4s in the same engine family yes so the internals have been beefed up allegedly at least subaru usa does not know what's been done inside this motor but japan has assured them that the mechanical bits and bobs inside the engine have been improved to deal with the fact that this is going to receive more abuse and live in a higher rpm range the other thing is this does have a unique valve train that is unique to the wrx not found on other cars again to the higher rpm the valve train though just the springs the springs themselves okay and there might be more but we don't know because subaru japan keeps that close to the chest the turbos are so unique to this car and it has some unique technology like electronic control it has electronic bypass and electronic wastegate on the turbo itself and that is for response moving it closer to that well where the air is you reduce lag you reduce airflow issues all of that that goes into turbocharging they claim this car in third gear at 45 miles an hour is faster to respond than the prior generation 2-liter but i did do something a little different for once i took this to ams performance a high performance shop based out of the chicagoland area they are probably the foremost tuner of things related to nissans and other japanese cars plus some audi stuff and they put this on a four-wheel dino and i i don't know how else to say this it makes less torque than the last car this makes about 246 horsepower which is identical to the prior generation 2 liter and makes about the same amount of torque 240 odd so we need we need to talk about that because this is the biggest complaint other than the looks how can you go after 20 years making the same horsepower as the old cars essentially and making less power in some ways and having this huge increased displacement over the two liter so there's there's a couple ways to look at this yes theoretically in the same gear under the same conditions this car is now slower than the last generation wrx because it makes 20 foot-pounds less of wheel torque the other way to look at it is if you actually look at the dyno plot and i spent a lot of time talking to ams's engineer their their calibration engineer went wow this car is far better calibrated than the prior generation 2 liter the torque comes in almost a thousand rpm earlier and it makes peak torque essentially right away and if you look at the torque graph it is a flat line it makes peak torque essentially all the way to redline which the last car did not the last car if you've driven a 2-liter felt like ass i'm going to be honest it was peaky it didn't make consistent power this does okay i think this is the big takeaway and this is the thing when we're talking about power numbers on any car is it's just a number you could make a thousand horsepower and the car could drive like you can make a hundred horsepower and it might be actually more fun than a thousand horsepower car because the drivability is smoother and subaru doesn't matter if we're talking about the old brz frs before that the old thule or some of the stis we drove the tuning was always really flaky you had timing being pulled you had stutters in performance you had hesitation you had weird power delivery like you could be in second and it felt smooth and then third you're like it's like like pulling power this car and granted it is cold out right now by us is way smoother it's more linear it doesn't have that herky-jerky effect it's just like you said and the tuner said way better calibrated so while you may not have the ultimate performance at this point which obviously people are going to be putting stage 10s on here it gives you a better building point out of the box and then when you start to screw with it you're going to have more overhead because you have more displacement to work with yes and that is the big thing you don't drive peak horsepower numbers and this car makes peak horsepower speaking of that at basically the same point the prior generation car did around 5 500 rpm this car however when compared to the prior generation wrx only revs to 6000 rpm with the last car wrapped like 6500 but with the improvements to the manual gearbox and they did some revisions to that and engine tuning as a whole there is far less rev hang in this car than the prior generation 2 liter but mark i think we beat that to death so it's time for us to take this out on the road all right jack [Music] mark we're in the 2022 wrx and what do you feel why are you whispering well i'm trying to set the mood set the mood for what this is a performance machine feel that 2.4 liter all right jack let's get right into it we know the biggest change here is the engine and how is it while it makes less peak torque in reality in the real world when you're actually driving this car it feels faster i never thought i would say this about a subaru engine or engine tuning rather that feels well done it doesn't feel like it was done by the internet anymore no it doesn't feel like there's a ton of weird programming problems and timing being pulled or hesitation herky-jerky it's so smooth then i'll slow down okay 1000 rpm the building look that felt consistent it's smooth all the way up doesn't matter what gear and obviously we're in the cold so take that for what it's worth you know it might heat soak and have some timing hold in different environments but for us this feels great feels way better let's just put it this way it feels way better to drive everywhere than the 2-liter in the previous wrx and listen to it mark no fake engine noise i really like it man i really like the engine and transmission combo here with the manual uh you know the only thing that i would complain about is the fact that it runs out of revs you know it pulls so strong to the red line and the red line's so low you're just like holy give me more um and i don't know you know that's just where we're at yep to be fair to this engine though the last engine in this engine make peak horsepower about the same time 5500 rpm so while you are losing out on like the six you know the extra 500 to 600 rpm doesn't really matter because in the last car just like this car the last 500 to 600 horsepower don't do anything anyway so subaru said you know once you drive this thing you're gonna kind of accept it and really enjoy it and i think there's some truth to that so let's talk about the other part of it the handling and changes in suspension and body structure compared to the last wrx what do you think i think in this cold weather mind you the pavement gets worse when is it like four degrees out and the shocks are a little bit stiffer because the fluid doesn't flow as well i think it rides quite well actually i think it rides better than the last car it appears to release on all these on the set of all season tires and our conditions to have better road holding the front end while yes you don't really feel anything in this electric rack does seem to load up the front suspension quite nicely and on top of that at this price point in the mid 30s or low 30s it's the only all-wheel drive option you have yeah i think that's the big selling point i will say just on the all seasons of course the pavement is littered with salt so it basically reduces traction so i can't really say if the front end loads up like the last wrx because that's wrx that's one of the highlights of it the front end felt really strong and connected here you're just kind of sliding the front end all over the place and it definitely under steers more the other part is the ride this car to me doesn't do as good of a job on the subtle impacts the subtle imperfections when you get a big shunt or a big compression event that's where it shines compared to the last car and other than that the all-wheel drive system they may have done some re-tuning here but it feels almost identical to me as every other wrx in terms of like dynamics of how it transfers power but that all-wheel drive system in conditions like this right i'm going to nail through a corner it does a good job it doesn't want to wash out the front end like you get in a gti or the civic si in bad or yeah this is what you're getting here people are going to ask well what's the difference between a car like the si which we just did a video on and the si is cheaper there's no doubt but is this like three four thousand dollars better and i i will definitely say the all-wheel drive system gives you so much flexibility and versatility in terms of performance and putting the power down not only that the all-wheel drive system makes it usable all year round and you can do stupid but this thing feels way faster than the si as you start to pull up in the speed i mean just look at the dyno sheet it makes 40 more wheel horsepower it's it's such a big difference so you know you know can you deal with the differences in interior you know there's going to be trade-offs in every car we're joking around about this what's the ideal car there's like a gti engine a civic manual transmission and shifter feel uh civic interior specific interior this car is all-wheel drive but that doesn't exist so you constantly are fighting about what is the best car to get for your money so here are the pros to me you know outside of the way this thing looks you have the all-wheel drive you have a okay-ish interior it's better than the gti's infotainment system without even though it looks like it's designed for windows vista it's it's still functional and it doesn't lag out no and there's still some physical controls they've kept and it arguably will have better residual than something like a gti but and it rides really well and it's quieter than a civic si at least in my opinion personally i think it's a little bit quieter i i would argue the ride quality at least to me is they're so close at least in the conditions we're driving in right now i don't think that's a factor either on really bad bumps so i had this on like i-90 and you know 290 by us yeah oh highways and at 80 to 85 miles an hour over the bad pavement it does a slightly better job at least at highway speeds to me it's quieter okay but where you really lose versus the gti and the si is the fuel economy it's not horrible i mean we're not talking v8 bad but it's under similar conditions i averaged about 20 miles per gallon where in the s i averaged over 30. yeah that's that that could be a deal breaker if you're putting a lot of miles on this thing you know even though it's an enthusiast car it's probably a stretch purchase for a lot of people that are buying this if you're going to rack up like you know 12 000 miles a month you know you're gonna you're gonna be flushing a lot of a lot of fuel down the toilet yes and the other big con of wrx's is the insurance premiums something that i hear a lot from younger buyers you get raked over the coals when you try to go insure this car versus something like that well the civic is also high it's not like this well this is higher but the civic is also really high so you might be splitting hairs there i mean again this is something for a buyer to research all we can really talk about here jack is what's the best thing about this car and now it's time to head into the final thoughts where you're going to explain that all right [Music] final thoughts on the 2022 subaru wrx and i wanted to say this first huge thanks to martin and miles at ams performance who were kind enough to allow us to put this on the dyno for you and to our subaru reps who spent an enormous amount of time with us so we were in a better position to teach you about the engineering behind this product so what do i think about the car itself well to be honest i think the internet headline which is this car is both uglier than the vehicle replaces and makes less power thus is slower than the car replaces does not in any way accurately summarize what this vehicle is like to actually live with because in the real world you don't drive a spec sheet and when you spend time with this vehicle and you compare it to the car it replaces it feels faster and there's a couple reasons for it the first is it delivers torque earlier than the car it replaces and it delivers power more consistently the tuning of this engine is far superior versus a 2-liter the other big improvements of course are all the body structure and suspension changes which makes this car handle better it's quieter than the car replaces and is overall a far more pleasant vehicle to live with so what are its negatives well other than some ergonomic complaints about the cabin the big one is fuel economy if you compare this to something like a golf r or gti which the e triple eight makes more power and torque than this and delivers better fuel economy it's kind of a hard pill to swallow but past that i really hope to be able to drive this thing in the springtime on real summer tires so i can walk you through what this thing's like to drive at its dynamic limit thanks for watching and i hope to see you soon [Music] you

Channel: savagegeese

Views: 569,221

Keywords: review, cars, cargurus, trucks, 2021, 2022, new, Subaru WRX, STI, Honda Civic Si, Civic hatch, manual, Hyundai veloster n, Elantra N, dual clutch, dct, honda, Civic type r, typer, CTR, K20, mazda3, toyota corolla, Problems, truth, hot hatch, cheap cars cars, tech, manual transmission, pros, cons, VW Golf GTI, Si, ST, track, funny, comparison, best, worst, mods, affordable, mark up, cooling, golf R, dyno, Dyno HP, Cobb, AMS Performance

Id: lN1wOv7i3rk

Length: 24min 34sec (1474 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 10 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

It's slowly growing on me as the black on black appears, at least on a monitor, to hide certain design choices well enough... I'm a sucker for two-tone though so we will just have to see how a white one looks in person and what build options we get between the base WRX and "WRX GT" as the website calls it. pretty damn fair review.

[u/idkmanporn]

My favorite part is the diaper

[u/cosmike_]

I wonder what all of the people who were poo-pooing the “biased” car reviewers and waiting for SG’s review are gonna say now.

[u/xdr01]

Glad they pointed out the trash maps of before. First thing I did was do a pro tune, woke the car up turned it from disappointing to amazing. Wonder how the 2.4 DI motor will respond to tuning, hopefully more on the table than FA motor.

Big wing, raise it, front light bar, roof rack, fat tyres. Dakar spec. Look at Porsche Safari can do it here with this model. Honeslty Subaru should of sold a Dakar WRX model, something new and plastic cladding would work going all in.