Your aging parents can't ride in your 8? My 96 year old grandmother rides with me when we are going to family dinners. You need to shape up over there

Good luck with your new car though. There's a few annoyances with the 8, but if you really wanted you could sort out the most important ones. And the good stuff outweighs the rest.

 

nice lookin but not my style

 

Sorry but $12k off is misleading at best... it's only actually $7k off the car. I've never paid interest on a depreciating asset in my life, and I don't intend to start anytime soon.

 

Congrats on the car like the new Subies never cared for the look of the old ones

 

Nice ride. You will miss the Rx-8 interior. But, I had a WRX, great car, much more reliable than my 8 has been but I would never compare the two.

 

And the other 99% of people finance for 4-5 years. In my case the total saved was over $12k. List was $36,975 and paid was $29,495, even with regular financing its a good deal. Now my trade-equity goes in the bank to earn me interest.

 

How do you rate the interior? I sat inside one last year when I was still shopping around and I found the interior materials to be rather flimsy and cheap. Has that been improved?

No doubt it's a beast though.

 

i like the STi's. your car is very nice. we do need some interior pics though. a good friend of mine has an 05 win WRBP. ver nice car. the only thing i do not like about it is the harsh vibration from teh rear window and VERY thin sheet metal. i love the blue alcantara and the powerband. i'm still partial to my rotaries though....

 

12k, 7k, either way that's a pretty sweet discount on a high performance car like that. good deal! and congrats!

 

Simply not throwing money on interest is NOT "savings."

Although I guess I shouldn't make too big of a deal of this... convincing people to take on debt for toys is what will help get our economy back on track, so I guess we should all be thanking you.

 

I like the new STI design, I couldn't even look at the previous generation. But I was surprised when C&D really trashed the lastest STI at the last "lightening lap", it was only slightly quicker then the 8's time which with 300hp only gives an indication of how soft the handling has become.

 

i saw a gray STi on queen's chapel road in hyattsville the other day. i wonder if that was you? or maybe it was blue...

i dunno. they look alright. i saw a black 09 rx8 today. first 09 i've seen in person. looks really nice!

 

It is still based off the Impreza , so the interior is on the econobox side. However the STi like the EVO is biased towards sport compact performance than sport compact luxury. Buyers should know this already.

 

The interior in my Shinka was better, switchgear felt nicer, like real metal for the HVAC controls, woven headliner instead of mouse fur, etc. The STI interior isn’t bad it’s just below the RX8. Now the dash plastics don’t feel any worse or flimsy than in the RX8 although they should have gone with real metal trim or piano black trim instead of the metallic gray plastic.

I do like the seats in the STI a lot more and they are the same Alcantara and leather combo I had in the 8 (I love micro suede) but they just seem a lot more comfortable while still holding you. If you were going to track the car then you’d find the thigh support lacking but I like it. The shift action on my 8 could be a little clunky sometimes but it seems very smooth in the STI, it may be due to the short shifter in the STI so perhaps not a fair comparison.

Another thing I didn’t know is you can set a shift light and beep similar to the 8,500 RPM beep on the 8. Except for this you can set anywhere you want. I have it set at 5k RPM since the engine is new. One thing that is taking some getting used to is how fast you burn through first gear, especially since I’m trying to keep the revs down. Usable power seems to be between 3500-6500 so about the same as the RX8’s 5500-8500.

I got All-seasons put on the 20th and grip is phenomenal in the cold, it will push in turns though so I have to readjust my mindset as I’m always expecting the rear to kick out like on the 8. I was able to fit one kid and 4 tires in the car and still had room for a passenger up front. I think I’ll get a lot less “looks” from the wife now that I don’t have to rely on her car for everything.

The head unit looks like it might be a double or a 1.5 DIN so you have the option of trading it out, I think the Bose speakers in the 8 sound a little better than stock ones in the STI (don’t know who makes them). Having a cubby under the center stack is nice; I don’t have to keep my phone, iPod, etc in the cup holders any more.

I need to wait until break-in is done before I can really push it, you do notice a huge difference between Intelligent, Sport and Sport # modes. I’ll probably only use Intelligent if I’m in traffic and not just for fuel economy, it makes everything a little smoother. Sport # is instant response and just a bad idea if you are stuck in bumper to bumper.

 

Sad to see you had to let the RX-8 go.
Good choice. I'll be most likely adding a WRX to my garage next.

 

i guess you just have to be a rotary fan to stick with mazda,sti is better in snow for sure, its a rally car rx8 is a street car

 

An update:

Finally well over break in, around 1700 miles and have had a chance to run it on the same roads I ran the 8 on. As you might expect the 8 is a much better handler, much more neutral and has less body roll. I also can’t seem to find a way to heel/toe like I could in the 8, just not enough room for my feet to do it like I used to. I’ll have to practice a bit with different positions.

The steering isn’t as communicative as the 8’s is, it’s good but there isn’t as much connection. A few things I’ll need to get will be steering bushings and sways. I think that will tighten everything up nicely. I don’t expect it to handle like the 8 but I hope to make it closer.

Power, grip and functionality are the main attributes of the STI whereas agility and style are the RX8’s IMO.

I did get an accessport a bit earlier than I expected and it’s just amazing what some ECU tuning can do, much smoother and earlier torque delivery and SO much faster. Based on Cobb’s information I should be at 340hp and 345lb tq at the fly (not spending money for a dyno just to find out). I don’t know that I’ll do any more than that as far as performance goes until I have money to fix it if I break it. I expect I’ll focus on suspension and a few cosmetic changes, the normal stuff; sways, bushings, springs, window tint, taillight tint, radio/nav etc.

 

Glad you're enjoying it.

Some interesting notes, though...

Sounds like they cheaped out on the latest Subarus. My '04 Forester turbo has a woven headliner, for example.

I wear size ~10.5-11, and I have never been able to heel-toe in my car. The footwell is way too small in some respects, for me at least.

First gear in these turbo'd Subaru 2.5s can be a bitch indeed. If I remember the Car and Driver article correctly, 1st gear (0-30) in the Forester turbo goes by in less than 1.5s. That's Ferrari fast, and actually pretty scary if you lay into it from a dead stop. I have learned to short-shift it.

Kind of amusing, I'm going the opposite way you are...my next car will be the RX-8, I'm ready to trade the Subaru's power, grip, and utility for the RX-8's style and agility, as you put it.

 

WRX STI, nice.

I crashed my moms car last week and at the time, they wanted to write it off. I took her to the Subaru dealership. Obviously she looked at the base model Impreza, but it is still nice. She really liked it.

They are gonna fix the car up, so looks like I wont be driving one Much better than an 02 civic lol

 

What you need to do now is to join your local rally club and bring out the true nature of the STi. Doing donuts or laying down 11s at the lights are kiddy stuff compared to gong over crests and drifting around a snow banked corner trusting your co-pilot that it is indeed a 3 left. I do miss my old subie in this respite. The 8 is too sissy for these kinda events.