1999 Subaru Forester L Wagon 4-door 2.5l on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Next Subaru WRX and STI to go sedan only; reveal headed for LA

After a serious bit of teasing at the 2013 New York Auto Show, Subaru might be finally preparing to pull the sheets off of the production versions of the new WRX and STI. The venue, according to Automotive News, will be the 2013 Los Angeles Auto Show in November. Besides that tasty bit of info, AN has a number of other interesting ideas about the 2015 WRX.
If you've been a fan of the five-door bodystyle, don't read this - the next WRX and STI will reportedly go four-door only. We've already seen the latter's whopping great wing, a tradition we're happy to see soldering on for next-gen car. According to the AN report, power figures to be around 265 horsepower from a 2.5-liter, turbocharged, flat-four engine.
Los Angeles is still quite far off, so expect to hear more rumblings about a production WRX or STI in the coming weeks. Take a look above for our most recent batch of spy photos, and then hop down below for some images of the stunning WRX Concept that was shown at New York.

Automotive April Fools' joke roundup [w/videos]

Happy April, everyone. And we all know what this first day of the month means: April Fools' Day. Today is a national holiday for pranksters with the Internet acting as a serious enabler, and it's always fun to see what kind of vivid imaginations exist out there in the automotive world. The abundance of fake news gets a little old as the day rolls on, but we did manage to get in a few chuckles thanks to a handful of major automakers and automotive news outlets that got into the pranking spirit this year
Some of our favorites this year includes Subaru showing what happens when you combine a bunch of rumors, a Corvette some may have already thought was a joke or Honda providing some in-car innovation circa the late 1980s. Honestly, we're still waiting for official confirmation from Mitsubishi that the recently introduced 2014 Mirage is an elaborate April Fools' joke using a failed design intended for the 1995 Geo Metro. We dug up as much "official" OEM foolishness we could find, as well as some of our other favorites, and posted them all below.

Subaru suppliers rely on gray market labor

The Subaru Forester is currently the Japanese brand's bestselling model in the US. A new investigation by Reuters is making some scathing allegations about how the popular model is actually made, though. The piece claims that many of Subaru's suppliers in Ota, Japan, are using low-paid foreign workers and asylum seekers to produce components that go into the CUV. The report says that these laborers are coming from places like China and Bangladesh, and they allegedly receive a pittance compared to their Japanese counterparts. Many said that they get about $6.60 an hour, but employment brokers can take a large portion of that pay. At just four suppliers Reuters estimates there are 580 foreign workers, or about 30 percent of the total workforce. The situation has turned Ota into a cultural melting pot because of the significant population of immigrant labor. The problem stems in part from Japan's tiny labor market, and the country's odd asylum system that doesn't allow some applicants to work legally. These suppliers produce many components for the Forester, including the seats, shocks, and fuel tanks. Reuters admits that the businesses have contracts with other Japanese automakers, as well, but Subaru receives the main focus of this piece, which you can read in full, here. When asked for comment about Reuters' report, Subaru of America provided Autoblog with the following statement: "Fuji Heavy Industries does not condone the exploitation of any class of worker, either in its own operations or within its supply chain. FHI expects all employees to be treated fairly, with dignity and respect and to be provided with appropriate workplace protections. The FHI CSR policy respects and adheres to the law and regulations of business as well as upholding human rights and international standards of behavior and the ethical standards of our stakeholders. Our supply chain network has been made aware of our policy and expectations."