A company “insider” has reportedly said that Subaru is looking at building a diesel-powered version of its WRX sports car for sale in the UK.
So far the company’s new boxer diesel has only been offered to Legacy buyers, but a diesel Impreza is due out before the end of the year. It would seem a natural progression then, to offer a more powerful sporting diesel to flesh out the Impreza range. Speculation is that such a car would have a power output in the 200 horsepower range, with considerably more torque, and could be sold wearing a WRX badge.
(Click through the jump to read on or on the thumbnails below to check out our 2008 Subaru WRX gallery.)
Such an oil-burning sports car would seem to have the best of two worlds; offering a taste of the economy found with modern diesels, while taking advantage of traditional Subaru performance selling points like the lightweight boxer engine, and all-wheel-drive system.
Would a diesel WRX dilute the sporting credentials of the current car, or just add a new facet to its coolness? Have your say in comments.
+ Autocar: Subaru WRX diesel for Britain
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A turbo-diesel flat-four sounds right…but just 200 hp out of what is supposed to be sport-trim is not competitive. One would assume this would retail at a base price around $26,000. Low power, a mid-range price, and the fact that diesel is now past four bucks a gallon knocks this deal down.
200 hp is pretty low but it will have a ton a torque which may be enough for the buyers of this car. Definitely NOT enough for me.
I’d like to see a turbo-diesel 6 cylinder in the new Forrester.
You guys are idiots. 200 hp out of a diesel is plenty, it will have over 350 pound foot of torque. Put that in an all wheel drive car and it would be damn near unbeatable. I say bring it on.
We’re idiots? It won’t be “damn near unbeatable”. Look at other high torque, low hp cars. They are slower than the equivalent car that more hp. Why is that? Diesel engines don’t have very good area under the curve. They make power over a very short rpm range.
You’ll have 350 lb-ft of PEAK torque but you’ll only get it for a short amount of time and then it trails off very steeply (turbo’s operate with a set rpm range also depending on their design and with only 200hp worth of air needed, the turbo will be pretty small).
Peak numbers really don’t tell the whole story. Look at other cars with diesel and gas engines and you’ll notice that the even though the diesels make tons of torque, the gas cars with more hp are faster (more area under the curve).
What moves a car is torque, so who cars if it has low hp, if it’s torque is in the 300 to almost 400 ft lb range it will be a beast
Cicero, read my post. It’s all about area under the curve. A car that makes 350 lb-ft of torque from 2000-3500rpm but less than 200 lb-ft from 3500-4000 rpm and then makes 150 and less from 4000-6500rpm will be slower than a car that makes 250 lb-ft of torque from 2000-5500rpm then slowly trails off to 180 and less from 5500-6500rpm.
Example: Honda S2000 vs Pontiac Solstice GXP.
S2000: 1/4 mile in 14.1@97mph
Solstice GXP: 1/4 mile in 14.0@98mph
Damn near identical times even though the Solstice has a 98 lb-ft of torque advantage and less than a 40 lb weight disadvantage. Hell, the S2000 has 20 less hp than the Solstice too. Even the 0-60 times are close at only a .1 difference.
The GXP’s redline is at 6500 rpm whereas the S2000 is at 8000 rpm and the GXP’s power (and torque) starts to fall off sharply at 5500 rpm where the S2000 is just getting into its stride at that rpm. The S2000 is making more power above 6500 rpm than the Solstice that’s why it’s still able to keep up under a pretty good disadvantage. Area under the curve man.
I know about diesels thanks, and I do not mind low end torque
Yeah, but the S2000 requires a double downshift to pass anything. You either have to scream at high rpm (sucking more gas than the displacement would reflect), waiting for a chance to get around the Prius blocking the passing lane or deal with the lag in time while you shift down when you do get the chance, only to see the gap now plugged by the big pick-up truck that jumped in before you by virtue of its massive torque. No thanks.
1/4 mile times do not reflect driveability in the real world. I drive in Boston traffic, and I’ll take immediate torque over HP any day.
I’d also like to see that Honda engine use all its available rpm (and of course it has to) for 300k+ as diesels regularly do or run on biodiesel that I can make in my garage.
[…] Original post żeby Seyth Miersma […]
1/4 mile times do not reflect driveability in the real world.
I wasn’t talking about driveability. More area under the curve is what makes cars drivable. Would you like a big fat torque curve or a tiny little one?
Cic…just give up. The WRX diesel sucks.
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