Subaru S402- Family transport for speed junkies

Let’s face it, the new Impreza is not what you would call pretty and it is on the small side to be a proper family transport and being a company that is sensitive to all its customers’ needs, especially middle aged ones with money to buy their high-end products, Subaru came up with the Legacy S402 STI, and like previous hot Legacy you can have it in sedan or touring form.

It is a Japan-only model so, of course, our grey importers will bring it in.

Like all cars wearing the pink STI badge, this is a serious piece of mechanical mind bender.

As you can see in this picture, they took it to Germany to torture it in Green Hell, Nurburgring’s Nordschleife circuit. Anything that has to prove itself on the Carousel has got to be a highly focused driver’s car.

Under the bonnet is the same 2.5-litre flat four that powers the Impreza STI but for some strange reason Subaru decided that the bigger car did not need as much power and clipped a few horses to leave it with just 282hp.

Normally this is considered a lot of hooves but for an STI machine this is nervously near merely adequate. There is no mistaking that it will still push you into your seats but if it had more power then drivers could have fun scaring BMW M5 drivers on back roads.

Torque is the same as the Impreza STI at 392 Nm and they are on tap from 2000 rpm to 4000rpm. Decent numbers surely.

I really wish that the cavalry count would me around the 330 to 350 horse mark while torque figures that hovers near the 450Nm mark would keep me happy. Top speed is not really that important but it would be great to have the extra grunt so I can toy with European perfromance models.

THose numbers are bigger than the Impreza STI but this is a bigger car and there is little danger of it clashing with the iconic rally model because the suspension set-up is going to be softer because it is a luxury model. I suppose we will just have to find an aftermarket tuner to up the power and torque.

From this upskirt picture it is Obvious STi did not allow anything that leaves the factory with their badge to keep the standard suspension so you get this nice yellow and red coil-over shocks which has so few coils that one can only imagine what it is going to do to ride comfort. These stiff springs and tightly controlled dampers will help it stick to roads like a lawyer on a corporate client.

Just outside this picture, to the right, are six pot Brembo calipers that grip the ventilated discs you see in the picture. At the rear you get two-pot Brembos holding things down.

If you peer under the car there are all sorts of changes from braces to better brake lines to fatter anti-roll bars and revised bushings but in typical Japanese fashion the company mentioned only the big changes they made to the car.

Bodywork changes include a very subtle aero package if you exclude the chin scraping carbon fibre front spoiler. The thing with chin spoilers and splitter is that a few centimetres of groudn clearance make a lot of difference to its effectiveness.

This chin scraper should help improve turn it at medium to high speed and give the car quicker response on entry and better balance mid corner.

STI Speedos don’t lie and they are rarealy overly optimistic. The last entry on the speedo is 260km/h because the Legacy S402 can hit that speed and hold it all day long.

It’s cute that they put a fuel consumption gauge at the bottom of the speedo, I guess they want you to feel a bit of guilt for using more tan your fair share of fossil fuel.

The S402 is definitely a good alternative to those European rockets, at least with the Subaru you can almost be sure that ownership is going to be hassle free. But like all STI’s parts that are not common with the standard car is not going to be cheap.

Keep your eyes peeled for parallel imports, this is going to be one great car for the whole family. have barf bags ready.