“Would you want to have supper with us tonight? We’ll have two bags filled with healthful granola bars. “Nobody ever stated that. Although containing enough soy protein to grow hair on your legs, those individually wrapped calorie enhancers are more about convenience than flavor.
These remind me of the new Subaru Impreza. It’s not as exhilarating to drive as the BRZ or WRX, but the Impreza, like a Clif Bar, utilizes only the required ingredients, and its convenient size and low price make preparation for life’s actual adventures a lot easier.
The sixth-generation Impreza, while still basic, has grown a little sweeter with larger displays, a more powerful engine option, and a broader assortment of standard options. Nonetheless, some items have been lost.
Following an audit, Subaru opted to discontinue the four-door sedan and manual gearbox in favor of producing what 73 percent of Impreza consumers wanted: hatchbacks with CVTs.
2024 Subaru Impreza Interior
The majority of individuals will notice changes within the cabin. For lower versions, a bigger 7.0-inch screen is standard, but step up to the Sport or RS, and you get an 11.6-inch touchscreen with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
The system is simple to use, and owing to the physical buttons that surround the digital display, things happen with the push of a button rather than at the sometimes slow speed of software.
Our Pure Red test car came with the RS’s lone option package, which includes a sunroof, a 10-way power driver’s seat, and a 10-speaker Harman/Kardon sound system ($2070). The interior of every Impreza is black fabric.
2024 Subaru Impreza Exterior
The 2017 Impreza appears to be making a Mazda 3 imitation in terms of design, but this car has always been about driving to do something fun rather than looking nice.
As a result, the new design did not alter the proportions of Subaru’s smallest all-wheel-drive vehicle: It has the same wheelbase, length, and ground clearance as the preceding model, but is somewhat higher and heavier.
The key functional alteration is hidden: Subaru has included a plastic step into the rear door sills, which is really useful for putting your lifestyle stuff onto the roof, and the rear doors are built to support your hips when you’re up there, tying everything tight.
While certain aspects of the new Impreza have been strengthened, others have been softened. The steering effort has been reduced thanks to a revised dual-pinion electric power steering rack, identical to that used in the WRX.
The Impreza also moved to an electronic brake booster, resulting in less pedal effort. Torque vectoring, which was previously available exclusively on more costly Imprezas, is now standard across the revised three-trim lineup.
The RS adds 18-inch dark gray alloys, a black front grille, side skirts, heated mirrors, and adaptive LED headlights that peep around bends as you drive.
Oasis Blue Pearl, a new, unique color for Sport and RS models, is reminiscent of the limited-edition 2016 WRX STI and BRZ Series. HyperBlue. Inside and exterior, RS insignia are shown with two opposing horizontal pistons, as seen on a boxer engine.
2024 Subaru Impreza Performance
The range includes the base Impreza, the Sport, and the RS, which is back as the top performance variant. The RS replaces the regular 2.0-liter engine with a Crosstrek’s 182-hp 2.5-liter flat-four and an upgraded CVT.
The time it takes to reach 60 mph is 7.8 seconds, which is 1.2 seconds faster than the last 2.0-liter Impreza we tested. On paper, this is impressive, but the performance gain is less dramatic than it appears. 3.0 seconds to 30 mph is Toyota Tacoma energy from the mid-1990s.
While the Impreza is somewhat quicker to accelerate than the larger Crosstrek, it’s still a jittery little creature, especially when moving out to pass.
The Impreza needed 6.0 seconds to accelerate from 50 to 70 miles per hour. However, it’s a considerable improvement over the standard engine, which took 9.0 seconds to reach 60 mph in our last test. We’re grateful that the RS is much faster, but most cars are.
The steering wheel has paddle shifters, and the CVT does its best to mimic an eight-speed automatic, but we’re still upset the RS doesn’t have a manual transmission.
Although the larger engine’s 30-hp and 33-lb-ft gain over the 2.0-liter basic unit, it can’t equal the excitement of the upgraded chassis.
When thrown into downhill hairpins hard enough to make the all-season Yokohama Avid S34P tires scream, the lovely chassis maintains pace without a hitch. The Impreza RS had 0.83 g of traction on the skidpad.
The new Impreza has a bigger gasoline tank: 16.6 gallons, up from 13.2 gallons in the previous model. Nonetheless, fuel economy has fallen somewhat. The EPA estimates that the new Impreza gets 27 mpg city and 34 mpg highway, down from 28 and 36 mpg previously.
The new RS variant falls one mpg short at 26 and 33 mpg, but it outperforms its EPA highway rating by a full 4 mpg on our 75-mph highway fuel economy test.