Whoever designed the Pontiac Aztek..
 

..now works for Subaru. I did a walk around today of the new Impreza outside of Wilkie Subaru on Broad St. Bravo, Subaru, bravo. You've turned an automotive icon into a Peugot. No, not even DaimlerChrysler could have done that.

I hope these things don't sell so that they get changed immediately. Australian Subies are already getting new grills, so there is hope.

lol here we go again... please dont nasioc this thread.

the car is goin to take some getting used to... i still have to see/drive it

I don't know what NASOIC is, sp I don't really care about Subie vernacular lol. I don't affiliate with Subaru's, but I admire most of them. This thing is rubbish. It can run 9's all day long and still be rubbish. It takes more than performance to buy a car, especially when all of the cars in the competition have caught up with that.

The only thing it has going for it is the fact that it'll be different. Different from the bigger looking Evo X, and different from any good looking car. But eh, maybe different will sell?

I took a long, long look at the impreza wagon last week, and it's not as bad as I expected. On a first-glance, the car's good head-on, front 3/4, and in profile, but as you swing around the rear, problems start. The front end is okay, minus the grille. The Sedan grille is cool with all the mesh. I've got to wonder if it would fit on the wagon.

The front end is pretty cool looking, and I dig the lights. Overall, everything from the beltline up is nice looking. I dig the greenhouse, the roofline, and the beltline overall. Below the belt, the doors are awfully slabby. Just too smooth, and about 2 inches too tall.

The rear is the big issue for me. Those huge chromey tail lights are pretty bad, the chrome strip running above the license plate is just gaudy in the extreme, and again, it looks like someone took a nice design and stretched it two extra inches vertically. It just looks...saggy to me.

*shrug* Chances of my ever picking up a WRX again are pretty slim, honestly, but it's not cuz I hate the Impreza, it's cuz I dig the Legacy so much :mrgreen:

^^^ ShortBus' $.02^^^

iv still only seen pictures.. and i dont like it. i guess i have to see it in person.

The Mesh grille is a factory option ( I call it an upgrade ) Its really not a bad car. Its just not what we are all used to.

Aren't there already three threads on this lol.

Yea but see...out of hatch designs..it's far from the best.

And to be honest, I dug the rear more than the front. The front just doesn't match. it's like a wagon, but stubby (but not in a way a hatch is..). The proportions are horrendous. I just expected more out of a company that calls the Subaru an Icon. If that's an icon (and that topic shouldn't be discussed in this thread or on a forum where 95% of the population owns one lol), then why did Subaru do such a horrific job? I don't see the design lasting. And if it does, it will never reach "iconic" status again.

Eh, I didn't feel like searching for it, and felt that since I did a new walk-around and it wasn't really a "spotted" that i'd post another.

Dude you think you are critical of the car? nasioc has spent the last year ripping it to peices. Nasioc is the North American Subaru Impreza Owners Club.

Or as Jon calls it NastySock

Well in that case I agree it's ugly as ****. It's Honda Element ugly meets Edsel ugly (old school Ford refrence ftw lol). Yeah you should hop over to Nabisco for a good laugh at how it has been ripped to shreds. Subaru killed the car.

hahaha

lol..yea..but see, I'm not a Subie fan boy at all, so I'm giving more of an outside perspective. I also didn't really like the car past that L series (GC?), so I'm a bit biased towards not liking it in general.

I just think its funny that a guy with a GTO is ripping on how the new WRX is ugly. Personally I like the GTO, but when they reissued the GTO car it got SLAMMED in the domestic community for being ugly and a horrible waste of the iconic GTO name. Just sayin..

Not that I am defending the new WRX. Ive seen them in person, both cars are ok in general but they dont maintain the WRX image anymore, they look like fords now. They are obviously geared towards people that didnt buy the old wrx because they thought it looked ugly. The cars are just blah now...arent gonna turn heads anymore. They even changed the WRX logo on the badge..

this is like the 10 millionth thread i've seen on how ugly the new soob's are.

You know why? B/c it's not a GTO. With a Holden as my avatar, with my sig, and if you've seen my car, do you really think I give what the American rednecks thought of my car, eh? They lowered the price so I can have it, so i'm forever indebted.

And it wasn't ugly, it was not aggressive enough. Two different spheres. If you want proof, go to ls1gto.com and have a feast.

WRX and GTO are two different lines of discussion, so keep it somewhat on topic please.

Anyway..the new WRX is ugly. Aggression has little to do with that..the design is bad.

I was waiting for someone to criticize the GTO guy for talking about how ugly the new WRX is, lol. I actually think the two cars have a bit more in common than people may realize.

On the GTO side, the car was just completely "Plain Jane" it has very little character and styling wise is really nothing more than one of countless other "jellybean" style cars out there. All the tacked on hood scoops, wings and split exhaust in the world aren't going to change that. What the GTO did have, is pedigree from the Monaro and was/is an incredible car in the bang for the buck department. The one area that cannot be doubted is the GTO's performance and build quality.

On the WRX side, I don't know of anyone outside the Subaru fan boy community that would call the WRX an "icon" or "halo" car. The original was beautiful in the eye of the beholder and evolved so that by the last iteration of the previous generation even if people thought it was ugly, they at least stated that it had unique character. I think that character and the cars performance are what drew people to it. The new WRX may be the fugliest car Subaru has ever produced, but if the performance is there, than it doesn't matter. Subaru is trying to entice people from different demographics into buying the car. By doing so the styling flies in the face of what the "traditionalist" Subaru enthusiast considers acceptable.

That is why the new GTO and the new WRX are similar in my opinion. The new GTO was so anti-GTO looking that it alienated the core traditionalist fans of the car. However, the performance was still there and it did open peoples eyes who would never have otherwise considered buying a Pontiac or GM vehicle. I think the same is true for the new WRX. The core Subie enthusiasts may hate it, but it may appeal to a greater market. As long as the performance is there, the enthusiasts are still going to buy the car. The re-design may fail (the GTO certainly did according to the sales numbers), but if it succeeds it will have brought the WRX more mainstream and that may allow Subaru to continue to grow and make money, because that is what it really is all about.

Shrug, I dont care about the looks... when the new STi's come to the US for sale... I intend to win the lottery and buy the whole drivetrain out of one! Bwahahahahaha...

Wait... I need to get mine working first. Damn it.

wow....lets have a mod just for searching out "new wrx" threads and deleting them immediately...i elect myself.

im sure subaru knows the whole enthusiast world hates their new style. if u ever noticed, each model barely makes it past 2-3 yrs anyway so a redesign is bound to happen. and fwiw i find the last few faces of the sti's to be iconic. a lot of enthusiasts see the wing from an sti and KNOW what it is, and they get a lot of respect and they deserve it. the new sti will not be so lucky, but i will def think of the old sube's as iconic, and that means a lot comin from me bc im biased as hell when it comes to cars.



and btw, for the money, the gto is insane. sitcker is like, what, 33k, and as desperate to get em off the lot as dealers are, u could haggle em down to take 5k off that and ud have a 400hp rwd car for 25k.....um, if i gave two ****s about going fast id be in that sucker...

I don't know if I would go that far. There a lot of people I know that aren't Subaru fans but still agree that when the WRX came out in the early 90's it did set a standard, one that it may not be living up to. In the US all it did was pave the way for the STI and EVO to be brought over, but globally it is an Icon. That is more true in countries that follow WRC where cars that mean nothing here, like the Peugeot 206 or the Citroen C4, also have cult like followings.

As for the GTO yeah it was more bloated Grand Prix, but it did have a lot of HP for the buck. As for build quality I'm not so sure, the engine is strong but I'm not even in the community and I hear about peeling door handles, seized ignitions, and other misc. problems. I suppose that's another thing the GTO and WRX have right, no matter the HP they never get it ALL right (anyone who is worried about their WRX trans knows what I mean.