The Subaru Sti: A Brand in Crisis?

The latest news from Subaru has left many fans and enthusiasts stunned - the iconic Sti brand is no more, at least for now. The decision to discontinue the Sti nameplate after generations of loyal ownership has sent shockwaves through the automotive world. But what's behind this sudden change? According to sources close to the matter, Subaru was planning to unveil a new car later this year that would mark a significant shift in the brand's identity.

One of the most intriguing aspects of this story is the rumored plans for a next-generation Sti that was supposed to be unveiled soon. Apparently, the new Sti was going to be built on the same platform as the Mercedes-AMG A45, with a more powerful version of the WRX engine at its core. This would have allowed Subaru to create a highly capable and desirable performance car that would have competed directly with other hot hatches on the market.

However, it seems that these plans were scrapped in favor of an all-new approach. Subaru is instead going down the road of electrification, with a new Sti model that will feature hybrid electric powertrains. This move has left many fans feeling bewildered and disappointed. As one commentator noted, "It's not so much like oh yeah they're indeed a new boxer engine no the identity is going away." The lack of fanfare or public announcement surrounding this change only adds to the sense of confusion.

For those who have followed Subaru's performance division over the years, the news comes as a shock. The Sti brand has always been synonymous with rally-bred performance and all-wheel-drive capability, and its absence from the market is deeply felt. As one observer noted, "The cars have never changed that much" - a sentiment echoed by many fans who feel that Subaru's latest move is a major misstep.

One of the most interesting aspects of this story is Subaru's approach to powertrains. The company has historically been known for its boxer engines, which have provided a unique blend of performance and handling. However, with the advent of hybrid electric technology, it seems that Subaru is willing to abandon its signature sound and feel in favor of something new.

This move raises questions about the future of the Subaru brand and where it's headed. As one commentator noted, "Subaru has not been unique forever" - a sentiment that rings true given the company's reliance on electric powertrains and hybrid technology. While this may be seen as a necessary step in a changing market, it also raises concerns about the brand's identity and direction.

In terms of what's next for Subaru, there are several possibilities. On the one hand, the new Corolla GR is expected to hit the US market soon, which could potentially fill the void left by the Sti. However, many fans are likely to be disappointed by this development, given the Corolla's turbocharged three-cylinder engine and lack of raw performance.

Ultimately, the future of the Subaru brand will depend on how well it navigates its transition to hybrid electric powertrains. While this may be seen as a necessary step in a changing market, it also raises concerns about the brand's identity and direction. As one commentator noted, "I'm not saying that it had to be electrification but it would have been nice to just see one last uh raw Sti with a different combustion motor." Only time will tell if Subaru can find its way back to the performance roots of the Sti.

The author's perspective on the matter is clear: Subaru has an identity crisis on its hands. The company has always prided itself on its unique approach to powertrains and performance, but this latest move has left many fans feeling bewildered and disappointed. As the author noted, "It feels like they have something to their head and they're like yeah we just have to say this right now." Whether Subaru can find its way back to its roots remains to be seen.

In conclusion, the news surrounding the Sti brand's discontinuation has sent shockwaves through the automotive world. While some may see this as a necessary step in a changing market, others are likely to be disappointed by the loss of a beloved performance division. As Subaru moves forward with its new hybrid electric powertrains, it remains to be seen if the company can find its way back to its performance roots and regain the trust of its fans.

The author's words serve as a final note on this developing story: "Branding is everything." Whether Subaru can recapture its unique identity and charm remains to be seen. One thing is certain, however - the world will be watching with great interest as the company navigates this uncertain future.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eni'm a subaru fan and i love the new wrx with the cvt it's amazing yeah the new wrx don't really know how to feel about it still oh don't you worry bro there's gonna be a mad sti version and uh ringland's gonna be flying look if they're not really going to improve the wrx that much they're probably not going to improve the sti that much oh no it's going electric let's talk about the new sti you guys really really wanted me to talk about the brand new sti or lack thereof well guys the lowered crosstrek is the final combustion wrx sti sick so the brand new wrx just was revealed last year and i didn't have the best thing to say about it to be honest with you i called it a disaster because i wasn't a fan of the styling i wasn't a fan of the engine there really wasn't much more power to be had and they were putting more focus on the cvt transmission rather than a manual just a very weird unveil to be honest with you don't you worry buckle your seatbelt subaru is about to do something even better so we just got reports that a new sti has been completely canned using a combustion engine now look i've always said that it'd be great to get a new ej motor or a new boxer motor for the sti but maybe what i asked for was too much you know after like 30 years or something but apparently they're just like no we're not gonna do a combustion motor at all for the next sti if there is going to be an sti before we move on with today's video i just want to give a huge thanks to today's sponsor dr squatch dr squatch is changing the way that men approach hygiene by providing high performing natural healthy products that make you feel like a man and smell like a champion dr squatch will take your shower game to the next level allowing you to level up your soap and step up your scent choose your favorite lineup of soaps hair care deodorant and more so you never have another boring shower or routine again and all of dr squatch's soaps are made in the usa using the finest ingredients nature has to offer and dr squatch has incredible transparency about their ingredients it's cool you can just go ahead and look at the label and it's all there and feel free to completely compare this stuff to the big soap companies of today because uh you're not gonna find stuff you like especially the difference between what is natural and what is not and hundreds of thousands of men have already subscribed to dr squatch which means squash bars of soap showing up at your door every single month and honestly if you use dr squash and it's not the best bar of soap you've ever used dr squatch will send your money back no questions asked and my first shower experience was honestly really surprising and side note i have a ton of allergies and with big soap i take a huge risk sometimes getting extremely itchy and kind of getting rashes on my arms and with dr squatch since it's fully natural i don't have any irritation on my skin and that's a huge win for me i personally love the smell of the pine tar this black bar of soap with all natural ingredients and it just makes you feel good and your entire shower has this aroma of pine it's amazing so if you're ready to ditch big soap and use all natural ingredients and make yourself feel better make sure to head over to dr squatch and new customers get 20 off on orders of 20 or more and use my code dsq blue and click the link in the description below that's dr squatch with dsq blue thank you guys so much and let's move on with the video alright so let's break this down two companies in the past year have made very weird decisions and you know what i'm gonna say probably the wrx from subaru and acura with the integra a lot of the same mistakes were made the styling in my opinion wasn't there especially for the integra i'll probably do another breakdown of the integra about it being officially unveiled by the way even though it's really not all that different but we'll get to that later the wrx every super enthusiast that i'm friends with which i know a lot they just weren't excited about this new wrx almost at all so this is big because this has been subaru's flagship performance car for 30 years and it's insane to think of subaru without an sti without hearing that boxer rumble in the distance that we all know it's almost like the car guy joke right we hear a car in the distance and we can recognize the engine sound the subaru was the easiest one to remember because it was a very signature weird sound in an article by the drive they have a quote from subaru and it says as the automotive marketplace continues to move towards electrification subaru is focused on how our future sports and performance cars should evolve to meet the needs of a changing marketplace and the regulations of requirements for greenhouse gases zero emissions vehicles or corporate average fuel economy so you're worried about fuel economy but the wrx gets like terrible fuel let's move on this is my personal opinion i don't think that subaru is doing this to just go electric i think they're going electric for different reasons rather than we think it's the right thing to do i think they're doing it because they're forced to with the new sti being proposed i guarantee there's some higher ups in the company saying we probably can't do this anymore because the industry is changing and regulations are getting harsher and harsher and harsher towards combustion engines what's highly ironic is that electrification as much as they're fun to drive like a fast tesla or the taikan turbo s it creates another problem we're digging into the ground just like fossil fuels so it's this whole debate between electric and fossil fuels yet we're going to another problem that's just my opinion when we could have gone hydrogen or in other things which you know hydrogen is like the most abundant gas g i don't know in the universe so the new wrx is a 2.4 liter engine with barely any horsepower gain which makes 271 horsepower 258 pound-feet of torque but i always made the argument that the wrx in a lot of ways was always evolving more than the sti was because they were using different engines you know they went to the fa instead of the ej and it felt like a different car even though the wrx wasn't as fast as the sti it felt like a newer version of a subaru knowing that the sti is not gonna make any sound that is a bizarre thing like it's super bizarre to think that the next evolution of this rally car inspired vehicle is just gonna make a jetson noise going down the street the issue is i think our subaru enthusiasts really gonna be all that stoked about an electric sti and i don't think so i think the ej motor is so popular in that community because of its character because of how it sounds because of how it feels and that's why it stuck around and stood the test of time for all these years is because it had a signature recipe subarus had this very signature way of doing things and the new sti was expected to be unveiled this year i think that's what's even more weird about the situation is that i think they did have plans to make a version but they were basically gonna go after the mercedes amg a45 super hot hatch which has a lot more power and all that good stuff but they were gonna take the new wrx engine or the new wrx engine and essentially upgrade it and make it more powerful for the sti so that the sdi and the wrx shared similar platforms and that way it was easy to mix and match parts and et cetera et cetera it just seems very strange because there was no big press conference for this there was no big announcement like hey listen we gotta change and this is why it literally was yeah we're not doing it it's very undramatic which is a huge dramatic decision for the sti brand you're taking its entire identity in axing it after generations and so it's a big risk for sti to go this way and here here we go again with should it be named the sti should the next car be named the sti maybe the sti should be almost a car of the be gone era right if they're gonna go this completely different way maybe it's time for a change of name or a change of branding because like we always say on this channel branding is everything what i'm trying to say is is that the cars has never changed that much and now we're getting this extreme change right it's not so much like oh yeah they are indeed a new boxer engine no the identity is going away and i said in previous videos that reviewing subarus was starting to get stale because they all used the same engine right for the most part it didn't matter if the car had 500 horsepower or 700 horsepower or 300 horsepower they all had a very similar torque band of like how it came on and what it sounded like it's not like hey we're driving the new subaru and it is just like incredibly different that was almost never the case it was usually minor minor changes like ecu tuning and suspension tuning you know barely and going back to that similarity the last wrx was only a two liter and it made a little bit around 268 horsepower and they added 0.4 liters of displacement and got 270 like what that makes no sense and it just feels like this weird engineering effort to just overhaul everything for a few horsepower right and it still feels pretty much the same so subaru i think right now is in a very weird identity crisis that's where i think they stand i think they're kind of in this weird spot of like okay like we developed this ej that has been around for decades and now we have to get rid of it very suddenly which means we have to get rid of the sti temporarily to change it to hybrid electric which leaves the wrx as the last great combustion subaru which is really a shame like it's just really sad it's really sad because subaru is pretty much unchallenged in the all-wheel drive rally segment at the moment because we don't have the evo anymore we don't have the focus rs anymore hopefully hopefully the corolla gr comes to the united states and maybe that could be a good competitor but i can tell you right now if somebody gave me the option between a brand new wrx and the corolla gr sight unseen i would go get the corolla gr which means subaru probably has an identity problem that shouldn't be an easy choice you know a car that's got a reputation in the united states forever and then you have a corolla hatchback with a turbocharged three-cylinder and i'm just like yeah that sounds cooler because it's newer technology and it's more unique subaru has not been unique forever and i'm you know i'm kind of a broken record here guys but at the same time i'm just trying to understand why they didn't make this more of a big deal why they didn't come out and be like hey we're like literally forced to do this because that's what it feels like it feels like they have something to their head and they're like yeah we just have to say this right now so we can get started on this electric sti even though we probably don't want to guys what do you think about the brand new str or lack there of the brand new sti do you think it was time for the ej to go away anyway to do something different i'm not saying that it had to be electrification but it would have been nice to just see one last uh raw sti with a different combustion motor but that's just me and on that note i upload on tuesdays thursdays and sundays and i will see you guys next time take it easy have a wonderful day goodbye um youi'm a subaru fan and i love the new wrx with the cvt it's amazing yeah the new wrx don't really know how to feel about it still oh don't you worry bro there's gonna be a mad sti version and uh ringland's gonna be flying look if they're not really going to improve the wrx that much they're probably not going to improve the sti that much oh no it's going electric let's talk about the new sti you guys really really wanted me to talk about the brand new sti or lack thereof well guys the lowered crosstrek is the final combustion wrx sti sick so the brand new wrx just was revealed last year and i didn't have the best thing to say about it to be honest with you i called it a disaster because i wasn't a fan of the styling i wasn't a fan of the engine there really wasn't much more power to be had and they were putting more focus on the cvt transmission rather than a manual just a very weird unveil to be honest with you don't you worry buckle your seatbelt subaru is about to do something even better so we just got reports that a new sti has been completely canned using a combustion engine now look i've always said that it'd be great to get a new ej motor or a new boxer motor for the sti but maybe what i asked for was too much you know after like 30 years or something but apparently they're just like no we're not gonna do a combustion motor at all for the next sti if there is going to be an sti before we move on with today's video i just want to give a huge thanks to today's sponsor dr squatch dr squatch is changing the way that men approach hygiene by providing high performing natural healthy products that make you feel like a man and smell like a champion dr squatch will take your shower game to the next level allowing you to level up your soap and step up your scent choose your favorite lineup of soaps hair care deodorant and more so you never have another boring shower or routine again and all of dr squatch's soaps are made in the usa using the finest ingredients nature has to offer and dr squatch has incredible transparency about their ingredients it's cool you can just go ahead and look at the label and it's all there and feel free to completely compare this stuff to the big soap companies of today because uh you're not gonna find stuff you like especially the difference between what is natural and what is not and hundreds of thousands of men have already subscribed to dr squatch which means squash bars of soap showing up at your door every single month and honestly if you use dr squash and it's not the best bar of soap you've ever used dr squatch will send your money back no questions asked and my first shower experience was honestly really surprising and side note i have a ton of allergies and with big soap i take a huge risk sometimes getting extremely itchy and kind of getting rashes on my arms and with dr squatch since it's fully natural i don't have any irritation on my skin and that's a huge win for me i personally love the smell of the pine tar this black bar of soap with all natural ingredients and it just makes you feel good and your entire shower has this aroma of pine it's amazing so if you're ready to ditch big soap and use all natural ingredients and make yourself feel better make sure to head over to dr squatch and new customers get 20 off on orders of 20 or more and use my code dsq blue and click the link in the description below that's dr squatch with dsq blue thank you guys so much and let's move on with the video alright so let's break this down two companies in the past year have made very weird decisions and you know what i'm gonna say probably the wrx from subaru and acura with the integra a lot of the same mistakes were made the styling in my opinion wasn't there especially for the integra i'll probably do another breakdown of the integra about it being officially unveiled by the way even though it's really not all that different but we'll get to that later the wrx every super enthusiast that i'm friends with which i know a lot they just weren't excited about this new wrx almost at all so this is big because this has been subaru's flagship performance car for 30 years and it's insane to think of subaru without an sti without hearing that boxer rumble in the distance that we all know it's almost like the car guy joke right we hear a car in the distance and we can recognize the engine sound the subaru was the easiest one to remember because it was a very signature weird sound in an article by the drive they have a quote from subaru and it says as the automotive marketplace continues to move towards electrification subaru is focused on how our future sports and performance cars should evolve to meet the needs of a changing marketplace and the regulations of requirements for greenhouse gases zero emissions vehicles or corporate average fuel economy so you're worried about fuel economy but the wrx gets like terrible fuel let's move on this is my personal opinion i don't think that subaru is doing this to just go electric i think they're going electric for different reasons rather than we think it's the right thing to do i think they're doing it because they're forced to with the new sti being proposed i guarantee there's some higher ups in the company saying we probably can't do this anymore because the industry is changing and regulations are getting harsher and harsher and harsher towards combustion engines what's highly ironic is that electrification as much as they're fun to drive like a fast tesla or the taikan turbo s it creates another problem we're digging into the ground just like fossil fuels so it's this whole debate between electric and fossil fuels yet we're going to another problem that's just my opinion when we could have gone hydrogen or in other things which you know hydrogen is like the most abundant gas g i don't know in the universe so the new wrx is a 2.4 liter engine with barely any horsepower gain which makes 271 horsepower 258 pound-feet of torque but i always made the argument that the wrx in a lot of ways was always evolving more than the sti was because they were using different engines you know they went to the fa instead of the ej and it felt like a different car even though the wrx wasn't as fast as the sti it felt like a newer version of a subaru knowing that the sti is not gonna make any sound that is a bizarre thing like it's super bizarre to think that the next evolution of this rally car inspired vehicle is just gonna make a jetson noise going down the street the issue is i think our subaru enthusiasts really gonna be all that stoked about an electric sti and i don't think so i think the ej motor is so popular in that community because of its character because of how it sounds because of how it feels and that's why it stuck around and stood the test of time for all these years is because it had a signature recipe subarus had this very signature way of doing things and the new sti was expected to be unveiled this year i think that's what's even more weird about the situation is that i think they did have plans to make a version but they were basically gonna go after the mercedes amg a45 super hot hatch which has a lot more power and all that good stuff but they were gonna take the new wrx engine or the new wrx engine and essentially upgrade it and make it more powerful for the sti so that the sdi and the wrx shared similar platforms and that way it was easy to mix and match parts and et cetera et cetera it just seems very strange because there was no big press conference for this there was no big announcement like hey listen we gotta change and this is why it literally was yeah we're not doing it it's very undramatic which is a huge dramatic decision for the sti brand you're taking its entire identity in axing it after generations and so it's a big risk for sti to go this way and here here we go again with should it be named the sti should the next car be named the sti maybe the sti should be almost a car of the be gone era right if they're gonna go this completely different way maybe it's time for a change of name or a change of branding because like we always say on this channel branding is everything what i'm trying to say is is that the cars has never changed that much and now we're getting this extreme change right it's not so much like oh yeah they are indeed a new boxer engine no the identity is going away and i said in previous videos that reviewing subarus was starting to get stale because they all used the same engine right for the most part it didn't matter if the car had 500 horsepower or 700 horsepower or 300 horsepower they all had a very similar torque band of like how it came on and what it sounded like it's not like hey we're driving the new subaru and it is just like incredibly different that was almost never the case it was usually minor minor changes like ecu tuning and suspension tuning you know barely and going back to that similarity the last wrx was only a two liter and it made a little bit around 268 horsepower and they added 0.4 liters of displacement and got 270 like what that makes no sense and it just feels like this weird engineering effort to just overhaul everything for a few horsepower right and it still feels pretty much the same so subaru i think right now is in a very weird identity crisis that's where i think they stand i think they're kind of in this weird spot of like okay like we developed this ej that has been around for decades and now we have to get rid of it very suddenly which means we have to get rid of the sti temporarily to change it to hybrid electric which leaves the wrx as the last great combustion subaru which is really a shame like it's just really sad it's really sad because subaru is pretty much unchallenged in the all-wheel drive rally segment at the moment because we don't have the evo anymore we don't have the focus rs anymore hopefully hopefully the corolla gr comes to the united states and maybe that could be a good competitor but i can tell you right now if somebody gave me the option between a brand new wrx and the corolla gr sight unseen i would go get the corolla gr which means subaru probably has an identity problem that shouldn't be an easy choice you know a car that's got a reputation in the united states forever and then you have a corolla hatchback with a turbocharged three-cylinder and i'm just like yeah that sounds cooler because it's newer technology and it's more unique subaru has not been unique forever and i'm you know i'm kind of a broken record here guys but at the same time i'm just trying to understand why they didn't make this more of a big deal why they didn't come out and be like hey we're like literally forced to do this because that's what it feels like it feels like they have something to their head and they're like yeah we just have to say this right now so we can get started on this electric sti even though we probably don't want to guys what do you think about the brand new str or lack there of the brand new sti do you think it was time for the ej to go away anyway to do something different i'm not saying that it had to be electrification but it would have been nice to just see one last uh raw sti with a different combustion motor but that's just me and on that note i upload on tuesdays thursdays and sundays and i will see you guys next time take it easy have a wonderful day goodbye um you\n"