Perhaps the most tantalising unveiling at the New York Auto show will be the Subaru WRX! Subaru has created with the WRX the quintessential rally racer for the street or track. With this title comes a responsibility that Subaru has always taken seriously. This responsibility can create an apprehension that can lead to mistakes. Much like an athlete, a relative newcomer with nothing to lose may actually perform better than an athlete who has the camera's and the public watching their slightest twitch. It was this "starting from zero with nothing to lose" mentality that has helped Subaru reached their "King of the urban tarmac jungle" status. The problem is that it is very difficult to continually meet the expectations of the car buying public that are always looking for something new and more extreme than before without ruining a perfected family recipe for mass consumption. Subaru is at a critical crossroads with the new WRX, an intersection between pushing the envelope and losing the familiar formula street racers salivate over. Can Subaru overcome the "sequel blues" that has for-ever altered the path of other podium topping offerings such as the Mitsubishi Eclipse, the Nissan SE-R, or will Subaru continue it's supremacy without the interim generational mistakes that we have seen from the likes of VW who needed to go through the growing pains of a bloated V6 GTI to return to today's "back to playing day's" weight an agility.Enter the '08 WRX- due in dealer's this September. The photo's above are a pre-release view of the new WRX, and within the first milli-second of seeing the photo you immediately notice the lacking of the WRX's vestigial tail of a trunk. As the WRX evolves to great a new epoch it becomes sleeker and more honed down much like looking at the evolution of man in a science book. Subaru has decided that now that WRX has become the spokesman for the genre it must now put away it's low crotch baggy pants and open flannel shirts and backwards baseball caps for the dark suit, kind of like the look Jay Z has adopted since becoming the spokesman for rap. Only time will tell if the new duds will continue to please the faithful of simply start calling it sir. The new appearance will fit in much more properly in a funeral procession or when going to your girlfriends parents to ask for their daughters hand in marriage but it might look a little too Kia for the street scene. One wonders if the aftermarket companies coerced Subaru into creating a vehicle in desperate need of enhancement so they could finally get some business. Subaru is covering all it's bases however by offering a US bound only traditional sedan just in case. Mechanically the WRX stays the same except for the beefed up STI steering rack and a reduced torque peak for quicker response. The only change that we will have to wait to see about is the performance of the new unequal length control arm rear suspension in place of the multi-link design. So Subaru is all grown up, The only question that will remain is whether Subaru's aim at providing a roomier more useful vehicle will enhance it's king of the jungle status or relegate it to anchor duty on the pre-game show. Only WRX's driving dynamics will fill the paragraphs of Subbie's future epitaph.
