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Subaru: it’s that odd car company that you’re pretty sure is Japanese, but a significant portion of their manufacturing is done here in the States.  It probably has one of the best and complete brands of any manufacturer in the world.  They are zeroed in on their demographics of the tuners, outdoorsy couples, and go anywhere families.  The culture of Subaru ownerships prompts discrete hand waves between club members on the highway.  The company name is so distinct it almost forces someone saying it into a slight smile with a fond recollection of a car they may or may not have owned.  The spokesman used to be Crocodile Dundee!  When you buy a model with a turbo Subaru automatically sends you a quarterly magazine with news and photos from the tuner scene and races being dominated by Peter Solberg in the World Rally Championship and Travis Pastrana in the Rally America.  This is truly exceptional pedigree for a mass produced car.

And now for the Impreza.  What the hell does “Impreza” even mean?  Does anybody know?  Perhaps after a late Thursday night and a flurry of technical drawings and sake the word was discovered scrawled on a wall the following morning.  Or even better, it’s a cryptic phrase that Tom Hanks is going to decipher along with the Subaru logo to solve Dan Brown’s first automotive themed novel.  Whatever it means, it has become an idiom in the automotive vernacular for sport, all-wheel drive, and fun.

I drove the base model Impreza and there’s still much to talk about.  Nearly every engine that Subaru produces starts as a boxer four cylinder engine.  The cylinders are horizontally opposed in a flat layout with the cams timed so the engine has zero mechanical moment, reducing vibration.  (Picture Muhammad Ali bashing his knuckles together in front of his body, hence “boxer engine”.)  The flat engine allows for a much lower center of gravity which is ideal for racing.  The power-plant feeds Subaru’s all wheel drive system.  The next step up in the Impreza line is the WRX which adds a turbocharger, and various other sporty handling components.  The WRX STI adds an even bigger turbo and gets some serious rally inspired styling queues.  (Note: there is a direct correlation between the Impreza’s performance and the number of letters in the nomenclature.  See 2009 Subaru WRX STI Spec C )

It’s a fun car.  Some fuel economy is sacrificed for performance, don’t expect much more than 26 mpg’s on the highway.  And there is no other car in it’s class that I would depend on to get me through a foot of powder.  (Translation for people who live in sensible climates: powder is really cold and fluffy rain.)

Impreza owners spend a lot of time under the hoods of their cars.  The Impreza tuner scene is huge.  There is a seemingly infinite source of information from on-line forums for Impreza owners.  And they run the gamut from first upgrades to beyond street legal.  And parts are plentiful.

Unfortunately something has gone way wrong at Subaru recently.  Everything is fine under the hood, it’s still bananas as normal.  I am severely irked by the styling decisions that have been made between the 2nd and 3rd generation Impreza.  Take a look at the emperor’s new clothes and decide for yourself .  It looks bland, beige, and Korean.  It’s like if you had just seen that Britney Spears music video with her skin-tight red catsuit, and then the next day hearing her announce she was becoming a communist and would only perform in tan Carhartt coveralls.  WTF.  

Subaru World Rally Team debuted the latest generation Impreza mid-season in 2008, then Subaru pulled out of the World Rally Championship completely at season’s end.  Coincidence?  I imagine that management could only take six months of looking at the new Impreza’s WRC promotional media before they grew despondent and threw in the towel.  But company officials continue to insist their decision was due to some financial crisis…or something.  

Or perhaps this was a business strategy.  By making the Impreza look boring, the Subaru enthusiast would be forced to purchase a higher trim model with more visual bells and whistles just so to get to where it looks decent.

I loathe the style of the new Impreza from any angle.  It just doesn’t make sense.  Subaru has really lost something intrinsic to their brand and culture.  And now I’m depressed.  It makes me want to withdraw from writing this post.

Automotive/Celebrity Similitude: The non-trashy Britney Spears from 2000, but wearing the tan Carhartt overalls.  Bummer.

2009 Subaru Impreza 2.5i

Engine: 2.5 liter boxer engine

Drive: AWD

Transmission: 4-speed automatic with SPORTSHIFT®

Category: Compact car

I am a huge fan of technology.  If it’s smaller, faster, lighter, I want it.  As my understanding of technology grew so did my appreciation for truly innovative technology.  Today I want to talk about turbochargers.  Not just because the technology is a cool concept, but because it is an innovation that seems perpetually new.  (A car is instantly three times as cool after the word ‘turbo’ is placed in front of it.  Try it: “Look, there’s a turbo UPS van….)  So what keeps the turbo as a ‘new’ technology: the public’s general lack of understanding of how it works.  I don’t mean to insult, but there are a lot of people who drive turbo cars that don’t know what’s going on under the hood.  By imparting a general idea of how turbos work I hope the world will appreciate them just that much more.

Your typical car engine works by harnessing tiny explosions of gasoline combusting with oxygen.  Propeller airplanes work the same way.  But way back in the day pilots wanted to fly at higher altitudes because the air is thinner and had less drag on the aircraft.  But thin air means less pressure and less oxygen.  Then the explosion inside the engine cylinder was smaller and the plane didn’t have as much power.  This was a problem.  Engineers got it in their head to increase the air pressure artificially (and consequently the amount of oxygen) inside the engine cylinder.  But this requires some additional energy.

Once combustion has occurred the exhaust gases are expelled out of the cylinder.  These gases can actually be moving quite fast.  These engineers designed a wind turbine and stuck it in the path of the exhaust.  This rotating turbine was connected to a shaft that eventually delivered power to a compressor which forced additional air (and oxygen) into the engine cylinder.  Problem solved!  Planes could fly higher and maintain power.

Now imagine Tim Taylor’s grandfather thinking about sticking an airplane turbo on his car engine.  (Insert white-man-grunting-like-monkey sound here.)  But that’s exactly what somebody did.  Now instead of a sea-level amount of oxygen being use for combustion, the engine is performing as if it’s in the oxygen rich environment of 12,000 ft below sea-level (which doesn’t exist).  That’s a turbocharger in a nutshell.

How about some variations on the turbocharger?  Like why have one turbo when you can have two.  Place them in sequence so that the air is compressed twice for extra power.  Some higher end BMW 5-series do this.  Or mount them in parallel to distribute the work of compressing the air.  The new Nissan GTR is a magnificent example.  Porsche produces a smart turbo that varies the angle of the blades on the wind turbine in front of the exhaust for increased performance and fuel savings.  Yet another reason to salivate over the 911 Turbo.  If I had to choose between these three cars I would just take one of each.

So go out and enjoy your turbo power and pretend to be Paul Walker.  God bless America.

Update: Check it out, this post inspired a comic at http://zawebcomic.blogspot.com/