It’s hard to believe the Subaru WRX STI hasn’t been a thing for going on five years. We’ve heard multiple times that the accessible performance icon isn’t truly dead—it’s just on hiatus, to be revived in some electrified form, whether hybrid or battery-electric. At the Japan Mobility Show at the end of October, Subaru will pull covers off of two STI-themed concepts—one fully electric, and another that retains the WRX’s signature horizontally-opposed engine as a base.
Now, on the list of automakers that love to tease us with seemingly realistic show cars that never reach the light of day, Subaru is unfortunately among the most infamous. As fans were rabid for a turbocharged BRZ STI during that sports car’s first generation, the company trotted out two concepts over four years, and sold neither. Subaru loves to do this. But there’s reason to believe that this time, what we’re about to see is actually suggestive of a production vehicle.
First, let’s look at the Performance-E STI concept. Subaru says that this EV “represents the future of the [brand’s] Performance Scene,” with “thrilling aesthetic proportions” as well as “practicality.” The limited teaser images the company has issued show the corner of the vehicle’s front end, with a slender headlight that bears resemblance to a Tesla Model 3’s. It looks to be a hatchback too, judging from the image below, which is a bit of a surprise considering the WRX has been sedan-only for a while now.
It’s the other show car—the Performance-B STI concept—that has us a little more intrigued. This one very clearly looks like a modern WRX or, more accurately, Levorg (that’s the Japanese WRX wagon we don’t get here in the States), with a big wing and long roof, though perhaps not as long as a wagon’s. Of this concept, Subaru says it “achieves a balance of advanced performance and power with practicality” and “flexibly incorporates” Subaru’s existing technologies, like its boxer engine and symmetrical all-wheel-drive system. The fact that the release very clearly calls out the engine as a “base” indicates a hybrid powertrain. And, in the short term, this is the sort of vehicle that Subaru is more likely than ever to put into production.
Why? As other automakers walk back their all-EV goals, Subaru is free to pursue a gas-powered sports car in the near term. Tightening emissions regulations around the world are making a full-ICE vehicle difficult to achieve, but a battery-assisted one solves some of those problems. It’d also be a clear way for Subaru to market an STI above its current WRX range.
The issue is, supposing Subaru iced whatever plans it had for the current-gen STI years ago, it would take some time to spin that effort back up again. Cars take a while to make. There was a rumor started by veteran journalist Jonny Lieberman about 14 months ago, who said that he’d heard Subaru was actively working on a new STI. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if one of the cars we were about to see in Japan offered a peek at that?
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Backed by a decade of covering cars and consumer tech, Adam Ismail is a Senior Editor at The Drive, focused on curating and producing the site’s slate of daily stories.