Well the car's in for a service today so I have a courtesy car from Subaru; it's a 1.5 Impreza manual.

I'd driven an automatic model in the same engine before and it had really p*ssed me off - totally underpowered, awful gear changes and just horrible to drive, plus it had advertising all over it.

This one is just plain black and a manual so I get to tell it when to change and there's no dodgy delay like there is on the auto's "manual" mode.

It's surprised me TBH. It's still ugly as hell, (and I'm a bugeye fan!), and the engine in a car this size means it's ridiculously underpowered (overtaking attempts were...>erhum< interesting), but it's not bad and it handles really well. I gave it some abuse on the way back from the dealership on the way to work and I was quite impressed on how well it hugs the road. A little too much roll for my liking, but then this isn't an STI or WRX so it's almost tempting to go and take one out on a test drive and see how good they are.

The only other thing I didn't like was the gear change - not sure if it's because this car needs a service but the gear throw seems ridiculously long and unprecise - had a few nasty noises trying to get third a couple of times which doesn't happen to me in mine.

All in all it's given me the motivation I needed to invest in a set of lowering springs and geometry ASAP .

Seriously though - don't write this model off - it's actually not bad to drive; if they could just make it prettier (cabin too - bit too plasticky)....