When the latest Subaru WRX debuted a few years back, it was immediately the subject of controversy, and not only because of its plastic body cladding. Folks were annoyed that Subaru made the odd decision to lock performance bits like drive modes and Recaro seats into the top-trim WRX GT… which was only available with a CVT. Yuck.
Well, a few years later Subuaru seems to have righted this wrong with the manual-equipped WRX tS. Sure, it’s not the STI many of us were hoping for (it’s never coming), but it’s a damn good compact sports sedan that takes the WRX to the edge of greatness. The addition of big ol’ Brembo brakes, a trick suspension, an exclusive digital gauge cluster and a whole lot of blue make the tS a really compelling package for people looking at cars like the Honda Civic Type R, Toyota GR Corolla and Volkswagen Golf R. I promise you’re not going to miss the fact this isn’t an STI, at least not too much.
Full Disclosure: Subaru flew me out to Napa, California, filled me with food and put me up in a lovely cabin on a vineyard all so I could drive the 2025 WRX tS.
I’m going to get this out of the way right up top. The WRX tS, just like the BRZ tS that came before it, isn’t an STI in disguise. It’s too subtle, down on power and missing special engineering bits for that to be the case. Still, a lot of stuff got changed for this car courtesy of the STI division. As you may well know, tS — in Subaru parlance — means “tuned by STI.” I definitely see that as being the case. Engineers at STI went over the brakes, suspension and steering to make this car as close to an STI in dynamics without actually going over the edge.
I’ll get to those changes in a minute, but I should quickly mention that the drivetrain remains the same. You still get Subaru’s Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive, a delightfully notchy six-speed manual (some say the travel may be a bit too long, but I disagree), and an iconic turbocharged 2.4-liter boxer-four motor that puts out 271 horsepower and 258 pound-feet of torque. That’s unchanged from regular WRXs, but I promise both are strong numbers. It’s enough to get this car from 0 to 60 mph in about 5.5 seconds, depending on how good you are at shifting and provides plenty of passing power on the highway.. Would more power be nice? Sure, but it’s really enough for 99 percent of driving conditions, and it’ll never leave you bored on a back road.
If you’re really feeling inclined to do some tuning, the WRX’s turbo only produces 12 pounds of boost, so I feel like there’s some room to grow in the power department (if you’re brave). I’ve only got two complaints about this motor. One is that it doesn’t rev high enough. The redline and fuel cutoff are at 6,000 RPM on the dot. I’d really like a higher-revving engine, but I guess Subaru doesn’t want you sending a piston through the fender. I get it. At least there’s a lot less rev hang than there used to be. My other issue is how damn quiet it is. On the outside, it sounds like a classic Subaru, but on the inside, you’d be hard-pressed to hear this thing — a lot more road noise is audible than is boxer warble. It got even worse on track while wearing a helmet. The motor was damn near silent to me, and it meant I kept hitting the rev limiter, which was very annoying. It really needs some sort of valved exhaust to make it louder and/or shift lights to let me know when to go up a gear. To be honest, the whole car could do well with being five percent more douchy than it currently is.
Alrighty, back to those changes I alluded to earlier. There are two big mechanical differences between a regular WRX and a WRX tS, the first being a set of really big Brembo brakes and the other being adaptive suspension. The tS comes with 13.4-inch ventilated and crossed-drilled discs and six-piston calipers up front and 12.8-inch discs (also ventilated and cross-drilled) with two-piston calipers in back, and goddamn do they work well. The abuse these things were able to take after a full day of performance on-road driving and hot laps of Sonoma Raceway without any noticeable fade was pretty incredible. Pedal feel was always confidence-inspiring whether I was coming to a stop at a red light or diving into a hairpin at 90 mph on a racetrack. As a little design touch to let folks know you bought a tS (if the badges didn’t give it away), the brake calipers are “gold.” I dig them, even if they’re more orange than gold.
Surrounding those brakes are 19-inch multi-spoke wheels finished in matte gray. It’s a handsome wheel design that debuted with the WRX TR, which this car replaces. I would have liked it if Subaru came out with a new wheel design for the tS, but I’m not complaining. Contract with the road is made by a set of 245/35R19 Bridgestone Potenza S007 summer tires that provide ample grip — though by the end of my stint on track they were definitely starting to lose a little bit of grip. With traction control turned off and some worn-out tires, I found the WRX tended to understeer a bit, but letting off the throttle provided some pretty nice rotation out back. All in all, it’s a solid performer on track, just pay attention to the revs.
Save for those badges and brake calipers and some black accents, the exterior is the same as a regular WRX. Sadly there’s no huge wing and the hood’s air scoop is rather subtle. You’ll either love it or hate it, but I’ll be honest, the cladding everyone hated a few years ago has grown on me. It’s fine. It’s not my favorite, but it’s fine.
Back to the new stuff — the suspension. Manual-equipped WRXs finally get the trick electronically controlled adjustable suspension that is standard on the CVT-only WRX GT. However, it’s not just a carryover unit. That’s where the “tuned by STI” of it all comes into play. Subaru’s skunk works retuned the suspension (McPhearson strut front, multilink rear) to work well on U.S. roads and the track. Let me tell you, they did a really good job of it. It always felt at home no matter where I was driving and was incredibly confidence-inspiring. I will admit that Sport mode makes it a bit too rough on regular roads, which are known to be a bit, well, bumpy. It works well on a smooth racetrack, though. On the road, I switched to my configured Individual mode.
That meant I put the engine response and steering in Sport and the suspension in Comfort. What a fabulous combination. The steering is really, really nice and direct, but it is a tiny bit numb. It’s very nicely weighted, though, especially in Sport. Even in Comfort mode, the suspension was still incredibly well-tuned for sportiness. It soaked up bumpy back roads and railroad tracks like nobody’s business. Sure, you can put the tS’ suspension in Sport if you want, but why would you make your car worse on purpose?
The interior also sees some changes for the tS, namely the Recaro bucket seats from the TR and GT and a whole lot of World Rally Blue accents. The Recaros are fabulous on the track, holding me and my girth in very well around corners, but on road, they’re a bit… much. I feel like after a long road trip I wouldn’t exactly be in love with them based on how tight they are, but that’s probably more of a me problem, so your results may vary. They do look very cool, though. The blue accents do as well. There are splashes of WR Blue all over the car’s interior — from the seats to the door panels, it’s everywhere — and you get the blue accents no matter the exterior color. Subaru says you can spec the exterior of the tS in any color the WRX comes in, including the new Galaxy Purple Pearl, which is nice, but I do wish it was more purple. That means you can get a red WRX with a blue interior if that’s the sort of thing you’re into.
On the subject of the tS’s interior, I should talk about the one new piece of non-safety-related tech that I am very excited about: a tS-exclusive 12.3-inch digital gauge cluster. It’s the first Subaru to come with one if you don’t include the BRZ, and it has three modes: normal gauges, a map that will display Apple CarPlay, and an EyeSight screen that shows all of the safety stuff going on around it. The cluster is fairly crisp, but I do wish it was a bit more customizable. Subaru pretty much just copied the analog gauge design from the rest of the WRX lineup when designing it. There’s a real opportunity here for throwback gauge designs like what Ford is doing with the Mustang. Just a thought, Subaru.
The rest of the WRX tS’ interior is fairly similar to the regular WRX. Interior materials are a mixed bag of meh to OK. Nothing is egregiously awful, but you can tell the car this is based on isn’t exactly premium. The tS does add some nice suede accents to justify the price. Space-wise, the WRX is pretty good. It had plenty of room to move around up front, and I could pretty easily sit behind my own driving position in the rear seats. One thing I did notice is that the passenger seat is mounted higher than the driver seat, so you get the feeling you’re riding on top of the car, but who cares, you’re buying this car to drive, not to be a passenger in.
There are also some fairly solid tech improvements for the tS. It continues on with Subaru’s Starlink 11.6-inch vertical touchscreen. Its layout and menus are all pretty logical, but holy shit there’s a lot of lag between making a selection and having it actually happen. Especially when moving it’s fairly frustrating to use. Luckily, some core HVAC controls as well as a volume and tuning knob are hard buttons flanking either side of the screen.
New stuff includes adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping assist on the six-speed cars, which is very welcome. Damn, do I love radar cruise. It does a pretty solid job of following the car in front of you and keeping you in the lines, and it’ll even automatically re-engage when you shift gears. It also comes with emergency stop assist, which will pulse the brakes or eventually bring you to a stop if the car detects you’re incapacitated. I’m not sure how this works with a manual transmission, and I was too chicken shit to find out on the road. Subaru is all about safety, and while the WRX tS is one of their sportier models, it’s nice to see that the Japanese automaker still prioritizes it.
At this point, you’re probably wondering what the price of the WRX tS is. Well, so am I. So is everyone. Subaru declined to say what it’ll cost, only telling us it will be announced closer to its official launch date in 2025. One spokesperson for the brand did tell me it’ll be priced “similarly” to the GT, which currently starts at about $45,000, so I suppose it’ll be around that. To me, that’s a fair price. It’s not exactly a bargain, but for the performance goodies you get, it’s certainly not too bad.
Listen, I know you folks want an STI, and I wish I had better news about that coming down the pipe, but the simple fact is we now live in a post-STI world. That’s just something we’re going to have to get used to. The good news is, Subaru is still doing a really good job of expanding and enhancing the current WRX lineup. Sure, the tS is not an STI, but it’s a damn good middle ground with enough power and performance to make you forget there was ever a car higher up on the Subaru food chain.
