2025 Subaru WRX tS First Drive: The One You Want

“Oh, you have to ride with Scott today.”

Admittedly, I did not know who the short, skinny dude with the grey-flecked beard was. I certainly thought it was a joke when I said “Scott who?” and the man in the Subaru shirt said “Speed.” I guess the guy did some racing at Toro Rosso before a German kid named Sebastian Vettel eventually ended up in the seat. A few minutes later, I was in the passenger seat of a WRX. Scott Speed, ex-F1 and NASCAR driver, aimed the latest WRX into Turn 4 at Sonoma Raceway and my head turned into a bowling ball.

What is the WRX ts?

After I’d picked up my head from my lap, looked into Turn 5, and discovered no, in fact, we are not going to brake yet, I realized the 2025 Subaru WRX tS is The One You Want. There’s always one in a new car lineup, you see. There’s the base car, which of course, gets none of the good stuff. Then there’s the “this costs HOW MUCH” trim the company wants you to buy. Somewhere else, maybe even at the top of the lineup, there’s The One You Want. In performance cars, that means the one with all the good brakes, suspension, and cool colors. Well, the Subaru WRX tS has bigger brakes, stiffer suspension, and cooler colors than the base WRX. There’s also a sweet blue-accented interior and WRX badges that have the same color as the STI ones did.

This thing is a great fence-sitter, balancing the line between hard enough for the track and soft and fun enough for the street. It also fixes a few problems I had with the baser WRX models and fails to address some others. Let’s start with the former — six-piston front and two-piston rear Brembo brakes. Speed is, of course, a much faster driver than I am, and even after repeated laps in the same WRX, I observed no signs of fade. The pedal is consistent too, and well-placed for rev-matching. As for the latter, well, the WRX’s ergonomics are still a little iffy. The shifter feels too low and too plastic, and I often found myself checking my gear position during laps at Sonoma Raceway. A more engaging shifter would go a long way to solving these problems.

Not Just a Track Rat

Then there’s the rest of the car. The tS is not tooSerious, thankfully, and even on track you can have fun, lifting off the throttle to introduce a wisp of oversteer. It helps in getting the nose tucked in, and Subaru’s sticky Bridgestone tires and all-wheel drive system push out most understeer from the platform. You can play with the car’s five drive modes to fit various tracks and back roads, but I wanted a second individual profile more than I needed the Comfort, Normal, Sport, or Sport+ drive modes. These move the steering weight, suspension stiffness, throttle map, and driver assistance sensitivity around to varying degrees.

Really, I just want to set up my two profiles and never touch the thing again.

How’s The Engine?

The powertrain has sat out until now largely because Subaru’s 2.4-liter flat-4 is unchanged for the tS trim, and because it fades quickly into the background while you’re trying to just hit your apexes and braking zones on a track you’ve never been on. It doesn’t need to be loud on the track, because, after all, you’ll never hear it over the wind and tire noise triple-digit speeds introduce. If you could, it’d be downright annoying.

On the street, the engine is more fun to interact with, and having 271 horses and 258 lb-ft of torque to play with feels like the right number for a nice twisty back road. You’ll drive it like any turbo motor, keeping the revs right in the power band and riding the grip from Subaru’s AWD system through to the next corner. It’s a fun game to play, and the WRX’s new Recaro buckets keep you upright and happy while you play it. They also aren’t a pain in the ass to climb out of and are heated. Some lumbar adjustability would be neat, though. It’s 2024 after all.

Final Thoughts

So what’s a split-personality WRX cost? The one you want is TBD. We know the new Galaxy Purple Pearl color (the one to get) will be an extra, and Subaru tells me the WRX tS should land “in the neighborhood” of the GT. So, not cheap, but also less than a GR Corolla or a Civic Type R. Given the WRX’s less polished edges, particularly its infotainment and shifter, around $40,000 feels like the right ballpark to be in given the upgrades. If you need one car to drive to work, drive on the weekends, and hit the track in all without compromising when the weather turns nasty, Subaru will still build you the one you want.

Become an AutoGuide insider. Get the latest from the automotive world first by subscribing to our newsletter  here.