2012 Subaru Impreza on 2040-cars

Auto blog

2015 Subaru WRX: Accident, wheels and tires

I'm sure this thing is going to be a total hoot in the snow. I am not a morning person. At all. Thankfully, the Autoblog team knows this – I rarely get bothered before 8:30 AM unless it's seriously important. So when associate multimedia producer Chris McGraw started blowing up my phone at 6:45 AM on a Thursday, I knew it wasn't going to be good. "I got rear-ended in the WRX," McGraw informed me, a shaken-up tone emanating from the other end of the line. Poor guy was on his way to the gym, for his pre-office morning workout, and an older gentleman in a Chevrolet S-10 struck the back of the Subie while trudging through a traffic jam on I-696 just northeast of Detroit. Everyone was fine, and McGraw says that the dude's pickup was in significantly worse shape than our dear Subaru. But the WRX was still pretty banged up, and later that day, it was delivered to the body shop for what turned out to be a lengthy repair process. What you're looking at is $4,620.83 worth of damage. What you're looking at is $4,620.83 worth of damage, but thanks to Autoblog parent company AOL's fleet insurance policy, we were only on the hook for our $1,000 deductible. Nearly all of the rear body panels had to be replaced, as did the bumper and taillight assembly, and after several weeks of being put under the knife at Suburban Collision in Troy, MI, our Subaru has mercifully emerged good as new. The day after the 'Rex came home, I dropped it off at our trusty Subaru dealer – Hodges, in Ferndale, MI – for some routine maintenance, including finally getting its broken fuel door repaired. The whole pull-the-door-open-with-your-fingernails thing had become increasingly annoying, and I'm happy to report that everything now works as it should. And since it was part of a technical service bulletin, no money changed hands for this service. If there are any 2015 WRX owners in the greater Autoblog commentariat, I'd love to know if your cars have experienced the same issue. While at the dealer, I also signed the WRX up for one very special, very important update: the fitment of winter tires and – yes! – gold wheels. I have a strong personal belief that WR-Blue Subarus should come standard with gold wheels from the factory (like the Launch Edition STI), but since the Japanese automaker doesn't even offer these rollers on anything but the aforementioned, limited-edition STI, I took matters into my own hands.

2015 Subaru Legacy

Subaru has a problem on its six-starred hands, but you wouldn't know it at first glance. Sales are up; in fact, the Japanese automaker has recorded 28-straight months of increased sales in the United States, leading to the best first-quarter Subaru has ever recorded, and 2014 will almost assuredly be the seventh straight year it has posted improvements. So, what's wrong? The answer is simple, though clearly complicated to resolve. Sedans - specifically, midsize examples - have proven a tough nut for Subaru to crack.
The vast majority of those impressive sales statistics have come from just a few models, namely the Forester, Outback and XV Crosstrek. The Impreza continues to sell at a respectable pace, but it's telling that the XV, after just three years on the market, is already Subaru's third-best-selling nameplate, outpacing the aforementioned Impreza (on which it's based), its high-performance WRX sibling and the Legacy, which is now entering its sixth generation, having been first introduced way back in 1989. It's that last model we're examining today.
Despite the fact that the Legacy plays in a hotly contested market segment that includes such stalwart sales champions as the Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, Ford Fusion and Nissan Altima, Subaru's competitor registers as a barely visible blip on the radars of new-car buyers. Graphically illustrated another way, Toyota sells 17 Camry sedans for every new Legacy that Subaru moves.

Toyota GT86 engineer Tada recounts how sports car came to be

Because the Toyota GT86, Scion FR-S and Subaru BRZ coupes are now a reality, it's almost hard to imagine the struggle that had to happen within the large, conservative corporate structures at both automakers for the joint project to even get off of the ground.
Speaking to those struggles on Toyota UK's Toyota Blog, GT86 Chief Engineer Tetsuya Tada enlightens us with a recap of the sports car's earliest origins. For Tada, the first stages of the project must have seemed almost as dreamlike as the final product is to drive.
Said the Chief, "I had been working in the minivan department engineering new product, but a month after the meeting I was summoned. 'Forget about minivans,' they said, 'you are now working on the sports-car project.'"