The rumour of Toyota associating in the production of the new Subaru WRX STI follows the fact that its share in Subaru had recently seen a hike from a net 16 to 20%. Let us now see this in detail …
We had recently come across the news of Toyota boosting its share in Subaru to a whole 20% from the previous 16% figures. What follows this now are rumours of a possible association between the two!
The WRX has been the most sought after model from Subaru. The car has had a number of facelifts and refreshes over the years and the WRX STI, first introduced in the Tokyo Auto Show, in 2007, is essentially a madder version of the regular car.
Rumours now say that the carmaker would be associating with Toyota in developing a new Subaru WRX STI. What is even more interesting is that its successor would do away with the current model’s four-door layout and would go back to the old-school 2 door body style! Well, that is indeed some serious stuff to wait for …
No, there has been no official word from either manufacturer yet, but it was Japan’s top car-website Best Car, that first came up with this rumour. They even claimed that Toyota and Subaru might go for a shared WRX platform that would have an intimate connection with the carmaker’s Yaris WRC and with what they call ‘Super AWD’.
Under the hood of the two-door WRX, could be a heavily tweaked iteration of the current model’s 2.0 L Turbo engine and it would most probably retain the six-speed manual transmission too. We are still unsure of the probability of a Subaru WRX automatic in the STI guise. But again, who needs an automatic transmission in a performance saloon?!
As Best carputs it:
“If all goes well, the new WRX STI will make its debut around 2021–2022 with new technology. Aside from this, a scoop team survey has shown that there is a high possibility that a one-size compact Super AWD machine equivalent to the previous Impreza STI will be produced jointly with Toyota.”
Apparently, all this is still pretty much a rumour and hearsay. But we think the idea of a Toyota-Subaru co-developed WRX STI itself is an absolute killer. What is your say on this? Let us know through the comments…
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