I've had a dozen Subarus before and bought a 1.5 hatch heap as a winter car and a fixer-upper. (The Prodrive classic is warm in the garage)

As Imprezas go, it has absolutely no power, so why am I having a lot of fun with it ?

​​​​​​You can chuck it about and it grips relentlessly.
It steers sharply with great turn-in.
It rides well and stays flat over broken surfaces.
You get to thrash it up and down the gears without caring much about the speed.
Fun to carry speed through bends and roundabouts (or the power drops off)

I reckon its a reminder of the fun I had with my first cars, when it was about driving rather than power and speed ?
Or am I having some sort of crisis?

 

Probably because you don't care about it so less caution perhaps

 

Maybe. Could be the whole back to basics thing with a forgiving chassis. I remember JK had a Citroen Berlingo for years for laughs on local roads.

 

I think there is definitely something in this. When I drive my 2005 Prodrive I'm constantly worrying about every noise, every rattle and every scratch that it might get. Once I'm in my wife's Hyundai i10 I thrash it around with carefree abandon. As they said on Top Gear, the fastest car in the world is a hire car.

 

As mention above, not really about less power being more fun its more about having mechanical sympathy for the better car. If you had a cheap high miler wrx that you wasn't so precious about and drive on its limit no doubt you would prefer the extra power

 

I think that as we are used to very quick acceleration and pace, for me driving it something harder to get less back ultimately is justas rewarding as driving something at 5/10ths**

(** around town, A roads, but not over long distances where extra power does make it more relaxing).

 

type r/ra with about 300bhp is propb about as good as it gets.

More power than that and your gonna get lag, lightest impreza out the factory, short ratio box too boot

 

Power isn't everything. I used to rally a 1.3 Mini round Welsh lanes. Brilliant fun with about 100bhp.

 

You can also "be on it more" if it's not so high powered IMO. In almost any subaru, the speeds will get silly really quickly, so you end up having to back off. Contrast this with a little 1.3 (or whatever) where you can mash the pedal to the floor for ages, and have the engine screaming at you close to red-line, without actually going fast.

Chuck in some nice handling, some lightness (an older hatch is probably several hundred kilos lighter than a subaru, at least if it's a new age), and I think it's a great recipe for fun, if not out-right pace.

My two most fun cars to date have been an old rusty MX5 (1.6, with LSD), and a new-age mini cooper diesel turbo. Both were extremely chuckable, and slow.

 

Could not agree more to this statement. I never wanted to thrash my classic around untill i got a 1.6TS bug as a second car. did it up, and it was a joy to thrash around. never was worried where i left it. got enough head turns and i was over the moon. sounded the part to with unequal headers.

 

Out of the 45+ cars we've owned my most fun cars were the Mk1 MR2 (122 bhp) and the Mk1 Golf GTi (118 bhp).

Power sure as hell ain't everything!

 

I had a 1.7 puma as a cheap daily a few years back. was great fun! Handled really well and fairly nippy too.
As other people on here have already said, in a tuned scooby things get very fast, very quickly on the road.

 

Funny you should say this. I just had an i10 hire car for 2 weeks while the Forester was in the garage.

It wasn't the fastest car in the world. It was pants.

 

Ask them for a Skoda Citigo / VW Up next time. 3 cylinder Porsche pretenders, sort of.

 

Lol my mates got a Puma, I had to send this screen shot to him.

 

I've had loads of N/A Impreza's and turbo's. Have to say I can kind of see what you mean. But as my N/A is underpowered and has AWD, it's not that exciting.

Remember owning an old punto years ago. Got it off my cousin cheap. It was nippy, dented, and awful handling. But I had loads of fun as just going round a bend at 50 felt like the car was on its side.

My Turbo is loads more fun, the most fun was my WRX import. Massive lag, but once that turbo kicked in, you got whip lash. Loved it so much lol.

 

I love my NB MX5, no power at all but revs well and handles wonderfully.

 

Before I got my Impreza, I was driving a SportKa. No weight, no power, super chuckable and cost me sod all, most fun car I've had. Now I've got the Impreza, the SportKa has become a track car (TrackKa...) and it's even more fun. Stripped it out, buckets, ST170 front brakes, wheels and tyres, no engine mods, proper budget build. On a short twisty track it's amazing, and it probably only owes me about £1200 including buying the car.