Subaru Swears: ‘STI Isn’t Dead’

There have been a lot of questions recently about Subaru’s beloved STI badge—mainly, when will we finally get a new one? Subaru has rolled out a handful of interesting concepts, but the company still hasn’t confirmed a new STI model for production.

Even without a new STI model on the horizon, though, STI remains an important part of Subaru’s identity. In a recent conversation with Australia’s DriveSubaru Australia General Manager Scott Lawrence made it clear that the performance brand isn’t going anywhere:

‘The tempo of news and activity out of STI publicly is picking up. It has the most vocal followers within the Subaru camp. As those concepts proved, there’s a lot of work happening in that space—STI isn’t dead.’

Subaru offered a glimpse of what could be its next performance car with the debut of the WRX STI Sport# Prototype (shown above) in Tokyo this past January. The concept previewed a modern STI sedan built on the latest WRX VB platform. Last October, the company also showed two STI concepts: the Performance-B and the Performance-E.

While the Performance-E presented a futuristic vision of what an electric STI performance car could look like, the Performance-B was more based in reality. Riding on the five-door Impreza platform, the Performance-B concept had a range of STI-specific performance upgrades—including, most importantly, a manual transmission.

Subaru has already said that if enthusiasts want a new STI, they need to make their voices heard. Judging by the steady stream of recent concepts, there’s reason to believe that something could be brewing. Now it’s just a matter of whether—and when—one of these concepts finally makes it to production.

Motor1’s take: It’s reassuring to hear that STI isn’t going away. But until those three letters return to the back of a real performance car, fans will keep waiting—and wondering.