- The quickest Subaru Car and Driver has ever tested, the S209 was a no-compromises track special.
- The price when new was $63,995, making this the most expensive Subaru ever.
- With only 209 examples built, this is a rare opportunity.
With the new WRX TR, Subaru is looking to placate some of its more hardcore performance fans—but the car is not quite an STI replacement. The lack of a new STI in showrooms makes the rarer versions of the previous generation even more appealing. Here’s your opportunity to snap up a special one: the S209 version, which is the quickest Subaru Car and Driver has ever tested.
Up for auction on Bring A Trailer—which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos—is a 2019 Subaru WRX STI S209. Yes, that’s a lot of letters and numbers, but no, we didn’t just fall asleep on our keyboard. Across the Pacific in Japan, it’s long been the case that the more suffixes attached to the name of a WRX, the faster it is. With the S209, that’s certainly the case.
The S209 was the first S-series WRX that Subaru brought to the U.S., but it was part of a long tradition of track-focused Subies. The special edition that laid the groundwork was the 1998 22B, built as a celebration of Subaru’s World Rally Championship success. Never officially sold here, these are now importable and can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction.
The rest of the S-cars—S201 and up—are not quite that crazily expensive, but they are in demand. Subaru only brought 209 examples of the S209 to the U.S., and at $63,995, it was the most expensive Subaru ever sold here.
It was also Subaru’s most hardcore factory track rat. The 2.5-liter flat-four had a larger turbine, higher boost pressure, a high-flow fuel pump, larger fuel injectors, and a reworked intake. Output was 341 horsepower and 330 pound-feet of torque. Sent, of course, to all four wheels, that grunt was good for a 4.4-second sprint to 60 mph in C/D testing and a quarter-mile of 13.0 seconds at 107 mph.
Beyond the added boost, the fenders were even more flared than usual to fit 265-mm-wide Dunlop high-performance tires at all four corners. Extra aerodynamic add-ons delivered real downforce at speed, the chassis was reinforced with added bracing, and the suspension and brakes were reworked to stand up to the rigors of high-speed lapping.
With 7000 miles on the odometer, you don’t need to treat this S209 like a garage queen either. Drive it whenever you want, and it should still hold its value because of its rarity. If and when a new STI hits the market, it might be quicker, but likely won’t be as raw.
Pop on your blue-and-gold WRC jacket, and head on over to Bring A Trailer to make your bid (perhaps in increments of $555). Subaru won’t sell you a brand-new STI these days, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get your hands on one of the best ones it made.
Contributing Editor
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels.
Source: Motor - aranddriver.com
