The 2025 WRX tS Is the Best Yet, But It Just Makes Us Miss The STI More: Review

There was a time when a WRX badge meant something visceral. Sure, it was a little raw, a little rough around the edges, but it was also unmistakably thrilling. It was a turbocharged symbol of Subaru’s rally roots growing onto the road. I should know too, I had one for almost a decade. So when the new WRX tS rolled up to my driveway a few weeks back, I was both excited and hesitant. 

tS stands for ‘Tuned by STI’ and it’s in this form that Subaru offers its most extreme version of the WRX today. As much as the automaker might lean into that tS in its marketing, the reality is that this isn’t the hardcore visceral car so many fans used to love.

Read: Is This Subaru’s Next WRX Or Something Even More Extreme?

It’s far more refined. It’s more composed and, in the end, a lot more grown-up. That’s not a bad thing either. In fact, it makes this the best WRX on sale today. 

But it also makes one thing clear. Subaru still hasn’t figured out how to fill the void left by the real STI. And if the current direction of the WRX doesn’t get a course correction soon, it might not ever get back to the roots that made it so successful in the first place. 

QUICK FACTS

Styling: Subdued With Purpose

The WRX isn’t a car that screams for attention. Even this tS version with its World Rally Blue Pearl paint and gold calipers can slip under most people’s radar. That’s perfectly fine, as the original WRX and most of the generations of the car since then did the same thing. This one provides little hints about its apex obsession with gills on the wheel fenders, plenty of hard creases, a signature functional hood scoop, and a few fun hidden touches, too. 

For example, get up close to the rear tail lights and you’ll notice a pattern inside, unlike anything we’ve seen on other cars. It makes the interior of the housing, and the angles inside, glimmer like a jewel even when the lights are off. The rear diffuser and spoiler are subtle but nice little performance signals to those in the know. Overall, it’s an attractive but not overly aggressive design. 

Interior: Finally, a WRX You Can Live With

Considering how popular this car once was, you might be shocked to see just how basic a WRX cabin used to be. They were often filled with cheap plastics, very few soft-touch surfaces, and just enough content to keep fans happy enough. Today, things are wildly different, and that’s mostly for the better.

The most eye-catching bits are the seats. These Recaro-built buckets are the perfect mix of deep and comfortable. They’re cushioned heavily enough to keep riders happy over long trips but deep enough to keep them stuck in place at high lateral G loads. We wish more automakers would put seats like this into their performance cars. 

The dash and door cards are attractive too. They feature faux suede along with a lot of blue stitching. The steering wheel is leather-wrapped with the same blue thread. Faux carbon fiber plastic sits on the door cards and the steering wheel as well. While it looks cheap to us, some might like it, and we’re not going to judge. The same mix of suede and blue covers the seats and adds a lot of personality to the interior. The driver information display is bright and easy to navigate via the steering wheel controls. 

There’s no getting around one big issue with the cabin: the infotainment screen. We’ve complained about it before, but there’s just something about the Subaru user interface that seems to be stuck in the 2000s. It looks nice enough, and the menus are simple and well laid out. But when I say that it’s slow, I mean that it’s really very slow. 

At times, after selecting a specific option or button, the delay was so long before it did anything that I wondered if I’d somehow missed the button altogether. Android Auto and Apple CarPlay work with it, but they’re beset by delayed responses as well. At times, they just crash altogether. It’s a significant issue that Subaru doesn’t seem to have a solution for anytime soon. 

Overall, it’s the only real blemish in an otherwise great cabin. The seats in the rear are just as comfortable, albeit not as supportive, as the fronts. The automaker uses the same high-quality upholstery in both rows, too. We can’t say that for many in this space. 

The WRX offers 13 cubic feet of storage space in the trunk. That’s enough to carry most anything someone might want to in a car of this size. The rear seats do fold down, though you’ll need to go to each rear door and pull a small round release knob to get that extra pass-through space. 

This isn’t luxury-car nice, but it’s competent, comfortable, and quiet enough to make the tS a genuine daily driver you won’t have to apologize for. And when you soften the dampers for a commute, it’s surprisingly civil, something I could never say about my old WRX. 

Drive Impressions: Not Fast But Genuinely Good

It’s important to point this out right away: the WRX tS doesn’t feel particularly fast. The 2.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder makes 271 hp (202 kW) and 258 lb-ft (349 Nm) of torque and while it’s responsive and tractable, it lacks drama.

The engine note isn’t inspiring, and there’s no real top-end rush. Racing from 0-60 mph (0-96 km/h) took us a full six seconds. While others have evidently managed the feat in just 5.4 seconds, both are slower than the 2014 WRX, which could do it in 5.3 seconds. The rest of the experience, though, is shockingly good. 

The tS designation doesn’t feel like a badge but instead like STI really did have a hand in this car. The adaptive dampers are probably the biggest difference as they help this sedan feel planted, precise, and far more predictable on a mountain road than in the past, meaning that understeer isn’t nearly as prevalent as it was in the past. 

The six-speed manual gearbox is slick, with solid feel through all of the gates. The clutch, however, is a bit tricky to modulate, especially in traffic. Heel-toe downshifts? Doable, but the pedal spacing is far from ideal. Launching the car from a dead stop requires practice and good footwork to maintain power without letting the revs drop too far once the clutch is out. Still, this is a far better gearbox than the utterly baffling CVT-only option in the WRX GT. 

When one is trundling around town rather than taking on their local rally cross course, the WRX tS is civil and comfortable, though it transmits far more road surface into the cabin than most sedans in this price bracket. That said, the steering, brakes, and handling are all outstanding. They find a nice balance between being too soft and too hard, but they require a little handholding. 

Read: Subaru Teased The Perfect WRX Then Pretended It Didn’t Exist

That’s because in the WRX tS, there are settings for things like the steering, the dampers, and the ECU tune. We suggest Sport for all of them as it tightens up the WRX and provides the feedback the car shines brightest with. That said, it’s nice to have the option of putting the suspension in Comfort when traveling with friends and family who might not feel comfortable the way this car rides in Sport. 

Finally, Subaru hit the nail on the head with its EPA estimates. It says this sedan should get 19 mpg in the city, and that’s exactly what we got. Having not taken it out onto the highway very often, it would be unfair to compare it to the EPA rating of 26 mpg it should get there. 

Competition

Those in the market for a new all-wheel drive performance car under $50,000 have a very short list to choose from: the WRX and the Toyota GR Corolla. Frankly, there’s no other way to put it than to say that for those in this market, the choice is easy. Those who want the most refined ride should get the Subaru. Everyone else should get the Toyota. 

That’s because the GR Corolla is priced between $40,000 and $49,000, which is a little more than a base WRX but matches the WRX tS at the top end too. For that cash, all GR Corolla buyers get more horsepower, more torque, more practical usable space, a far more enjoyable exhaust note, and a more engaging powertrain. 

Notably, the list of available options gets a touch longer for those not committed to power at the rear wheels. The Honda Civic Type R and Civic Si are both well-loved. The Hyundai Elantra N is maybe the best bang for the buck in this entire segment. That said, I personally agree with Max Verstappen, who recently said that driving a front-wheel drive car is “the worst thing ever.”

On the flip side, one could look at used cars, and then things like the Genesis G70 come into the mix. It’s a spectacular driver’s car with great dynamics, lots of luxury, and everything that we like about the WRX, but with more power and even more refinement. The only downside there is the lack of a manual transmission option. 

Final Thoughts

Here’s the kicker. This is a fun car to drive. It looks pretty good. It’s reasonably practical. But it’s selling like hot garbage. This year, its sales are down 35.4 percent to just 6,888 units through July. In fact, in that month alone, sales dropped 66.6 percent from the previous July to just 457 units. Why is it selling so poorly despite being all of the positive things we listed above? 

I think that comes down to two things. First, it’s not the visceral boy-racer car that it once was. Sure, it was a bit immature, but that added character to what now feels kind of like a star collegiate athlete turned stock trader. Nothing is wrong with that, but it feels like the WRX lost its soul as it matured. 

Secondly, in the pursuit of maturity and refinement, the car is less accessible than it used to be. Sure, inflation has taken a big chunk out of everybody’s wallets, but listen to this. A decade ago, the WRX started at $25,995 or, roughly $35,846 today. That’s reasonably close to the $38,920 base price of a WRX today, but as the trims go up, the pricing gap does too. 

The GT (with its pathetic CVT) and the tS start at over $48,000. Back in 2014, the very nicest WRX, the Limited trim, started at $29,495 before options. In today’s money, that’s just $40,622. Put another way, adjusted for inflation, the WRX tS costs as much as a WRX STI but still doesn’t offer true STI performance or engagement. 

These two issues are what hold me back from outrightly recommending the WRX to most folks in the market for a performance four-door for less than $50,000. Sure, it’s refined, and yes, it’s engaging from behind the wheel, but it’s missing what made the WRX and the WRX STI so special, that raucous, visceral nature that was priced cheap enough that almost anyone could be a part of the club. 

Still, for those who really do find this blend of performance and refinement attractive, they can take comfort in knowing that they’re driving the best WRX, and for a certain target group the best Subaru, on sale today.