Driving Subaru’s $250,000 STI rally car, the fastest on snow, ice and Earth

A short while ago I did a story about competing in my first ever stage rally. I got cold and muddy, but despite racing a near bone-stock 2009 Honda Fit – which at 117 hp was about as powerful as a slug – I had the time of my life. Only I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to drive Subaru’s race-winning machine, a car so insane it finished over an hour ahead of me that weekend.

I wonder no more, because deep in a snowy New Hampshire forest at Team O’Neil’s rally school, I had the chance to drive it. The only stipulation? I had to promise I wouldn’t crash. It is worth $250,000, after all.

During the LSPR round of Rally America, five-time champ David Higgins flew past Yahoo’s camera guy with such vigor a rock flew up and clonked him in the head. Despite my best efforts in the Fit, I couldn’t even shower him in mud. The car that did the clonking is based off a production Subaru WRX STI, which typically retails for around $35,000. So what makes this one worth so much more?

At roughly 360 hp, a 55-hp bump over production, it certainly isn’t horsepower. But the torque jumps from 290 lb-ft to a colossal 500 lb-ft; it also features an anti-lag system unleashing that torque from near-idle, and it arrives with a six-speed sequential racing gearbox. A hydraulic handbrake gets bolted in, and the trick suspension system probably costs more than an entire WRX itself. And that’s just the start.

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This is a proper racing car, one capable of traveling from a standstill to 60mph – on gravel – in just 3.3 seconds. (Let that sink in for a minute: It’s almost as fast as the new 660-hp Ferrari 488 GTB is on pavement.) It drives in a way you’d swear was impossible, and from behind the wheel, it feels worth all $250,000 and then some. But before we get into that, let’s remind ourselves where Subaru’s rallying heritage began.

Technically it all started in 1980, but it wasn’t until 1989 that the Subaru World Rally Team, run by David Richard’s Prodrive organization, became official. In the mid-‘90s, with Colin McRae and Carlos Sainz at the helm, the iconic blue Impreza wearing yellow 555 decals became mythical – yielding a cult-like following, similar (to a lesser extent) to that of Ferrari in Formula One; to this day, a good Subaru is a blue Subaru – one with gold rims.

However, as Wall Street tumbled in 2008, so did Subaru’s involvement in the sport; a lack of results in 2006 and 2007 didn’t help the argument for staying in the chase either. But with Subaru’s sales now soaring to record levels, why, then, hasn’t it returned to the top-level World Rally Championship?

Simply put, Subaru doesn’t have an eligible engine. The current WRC rules adopted in 2011 say engines must be 1.6-liter turbos, blocking the company’s beloved 2.5-liter Boxer from competition. VW, Citroen, Hyundai, Ford and soon-to-be Toyota can justify building an engine to this specification because they have relevant cars in their fleets. At present, it makes no business sense for Subaru.

But all is not lost. Subaru has been crushing the opposition on U.S. soil for many years, and Higgins has been the man doing the pounding. Rallying in America lacks the following of WRC in Europe, but nonetheless it remains an important marketing tool for the Japanese automaker.