The Impreza WRX STI Spec C Type RA-R is the ultimate rally replica, and a spectacular JDM bargain.
Nostalgia is a heavy lens through which to judge a motor car. The classic Japanese car market has long been entirely captivated by the cinematic mystique and PlayStation provenance of the Subaru Impreza 22B. It is a stunning thing to behold, a blistered, wide-arched homage to Colin McRae that now comfortably inhabits the £150,000 to £200,000 auction world, with exceptional cars having gone much further still. But is it the best Impreza? Hmmm…
If you want the ultimate Subaru Impreza, and frankly, the finest rally replica ever created, you must look past the 22B. You must look past the Ford Escort RS Cosworth with its charming but distinctly old-school power delivery, and the Lancia Delta Integrale Evo II with its well-documented delicacy. You must even look respectfully past the almighty Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VI Tommi Mäkinen Edition. The apex of the breed is something known largely only to the JDM hardcore – a late Hawkeye with a name so comically long it barely fits on a V5C: the Subaru Impreza WRX STI Spec C Type RA-R.
To understand the RA-R, you have to understand the anorak-level minutiae of Subaru’s motorsport division. The standard STI was the fast road car. The Spec C, or Specification Competition, was the Group N homologation lightweight, stripped of mass and sharpened for rallying. The Type RA, or Record Attempt, added still more focus. But for this swansong of the Hawkeye generation, Subaru Tecnica International added an extra R, officially meaning radical or racy. They took the homologation special, handed it to the motorsport engineers and told them to build the sharpest tarmac weapon in the company’s history.
Let us start with the elephant in the room: the aesthetic. To the uninitiated, the RA-R looks almost naked. There is no towering rear wing and no visual theatre for people who need their homologation specials to shout across a supermarket car park. It was offered in Pure White, WR Rally Blue Mica and a special run of just 50 Astral Yellow cars, but the shape itself is comically discreet. From the rear it looks almost apologetic, as if someone has nicked the spoiler off a proper STI. This was not a styling oversight. The RA-R was not a dress-up special. It was a road-going precision instrument built around response, weight, grip and stiffness rather than rally-rep pantomime. For the discerning street driver, that created the ultimate stealth silhouette – though many have since sprouted wings; and yes, they really do fly. More on that in a moment.
But beneath that unassuming, wingless body lies a chassis of magnificent, scalpel-sharp capability. Where a standard Impreza, even a base Spec C, has a degree of inherent road-going compliance, the RA-R was subjected to a comprehensive kinematic overhaul. STI binned the ordinary softness and fitted reinforced dampers, springs and stabilisers, with the ride height hunkered down over those special 18-inch wheels. Crucially, it replaced the rubber suspension bushes with pillow-ball joints throughout the suspension links.
If you have driven a standard Hawkeye STI, you know it is a rapid, capable thing, but without some of the fizz of an Integrale, even if the Impreza is empirically the more accomplished (as it should be, since it’s far newer). But climbing into an RA-R is a revelation. You genuinely feel the difference within the first 50 yards. That extra R brings an astonishing level of fizz to your inputs. The pillow-ball joints eradicate all the slack from the chassis; the steering is telepathic, reacting to micro-adjustments with a ferocity that makes a brilliant Delta Integrale feel almost laid-back by comparison. Braking, courtesy of special six-pot front Brembo callipers biting into slotted disc, is violent enough to detach your retinas.
Then there is the engine. It is the accepted wisdom that the Evo VI TME is the king of the rally reps, but the Evo demands you drive it with absolute commitment everywhere to feel that magic. If you don’t… well, it’s a four-cylinder four-door saloon; it only truly comes alive when you have it by the scruff of the neck. The RA-R is different. At its heart is the 2.0-litre EJ20, an S204-derived unit widely reported to have been hand-balanced and blueprinted, fed by a larger twin-scroll, ball-bearing turbocharger with optimised turbine-blade design.
The JDM twin-scroll EJ20 architecture uses equal-length exhaust manifolding, so do not come here expecting the traditional loping Subaru burble. That would rather miss the point. The result is an engine that produces 320PS, or 316bhp, and a muscular 318lb ft of torque, but it does so with an emotional pull that entirely shatters the clinical Japanese car myth. It does not burble; it emits a hard, frantic, metallic motorsport scream as it races to its 8000rpm redline. Yet you do not need to be driving at ten-tenths to feel the joy of this powertrain. It is infinitely flexible, yet utterly intoxicating when provoked. It may not have the fairy-dust connection of McRae or Richard Burns, but thread an RA-R down a wet Welsh B-road, and you will feel every inch the WRC god. Yet when you just want to drive quickly and spiritedly, there’s theatre aplenty to make any journey entertaining – if not exactly a luxury experience.
So, how do you go about owning the best Impreza ever made? It requires a leap of faith, because the RA-R was produced exclusively for the Japanese Domestic Market. Just 300 units were built in 2006. Several have come to the UK over the years, however.
The reality of ownership in the UK is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it is still a Hawkeye Impreza. Every competent Japanese performance specialist in the country can change a cambelt, diagnose an EJ20 misfire or source a clutch. However, the RA-R-specific parts, those glorious six-pot Brembos, the STI suspension components and the unique 18-inch wheels, are ruinously expensive and incredibly difficult to source outside Japan.
Importing one is your primary hurdle. The days of plucking cheap JDM metal from the docks at Southampton are long gone. You will need to employ a reputable importer to scour the Japanese auction houses for a Grade 4 or 4.5 example. Once it lands, there are vital practicalities to attend to, including import duty, VAT, NOVA, MOT, registration and the usual speedometer and rear fog-light work. Because the RA-R is now more than ten years old, it should not need IVA approval in the usual private import route.
There is also the question of fuel and corrosion. Japanese-market performance cars were calibrated around high-octane fuel, so a proper specialist should check the map and fuelling before you unleash that twin-scroll turbo on a British bypass, especially if the car has been modified in Japan. Furthermore, Japanese cars were not undersealed from the factory. If you plan to drive it on salted UK winter roads, a comprehensive Dinitrol or Waxoyl treatment is not optional; it is mandatory to prevent the lightweight shell from dissolving into brown dust as quickly as the RA-R pings to the next apex.
Yet when you look at the market, the RA-R represents a spectacular bargain, though the window is closing rapidly. Recent UK evidence puts usable cars in the high £30,000s to £50,000 territory, with condition, mileage, originality and colour doing serious damage to the final number. A really sharp landed and registered example, especially in Astral Yellow, is now easily a £45,000 to £60,000 proposition.
Compare that to the £150,000 to £200,000 usually required to buy a gorgeous, but dynamically older 22B, with the very best cars soaring well beyond that. For a third of the price of the museum piece, you get a genuinely rare homologation special that demands no apologies. It is the zenith of the analogue, mechanical rally replica, and proof positive that the longest name in the business absolutely belongs to the best rally-rep in the world.
Have you driven or owned a Subaru Impreza WRX STI Spec C Type RA-R, or do you still think the 22B wears the Impreza crown? Let us know in the comments below.
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