Why I'm Selling My Subaru WRX STI - For Sale!

Why I'm Selling My Subaru WRX STI.

I bought it before I had any experience in the world of automotive journalism. There were very few cars I had test driven beforehand, and so I didn’t really know what I liked.

All of my perceptions about what car I wanted were based purely on what other people have said about them, as well as specifications and numbers behind each car.

I thought I wanted something that could do everything, and I still think for a 1 car garage, there are very few cars that can challenge the all around amazingness that is an STI. But in making one car that can do everything, there are compromises. You lose fuel economy, you lose ground clearance, you lose some cargo space, but I think really the most important thing here is that you add weight.

I was caught up in this world where horsepower basically means everything. And culturally this is very true. Plenty of people could tell you the exact horsepower of their car, but very few could tell you the exact weight of their car. Car people tend to put far, far to much emphasis on horsepower and not nearly enough on weight. Even in the supercar world, there are heavy cars. It all gets overshadowed by how much horsepower the car has and how fast the car can hit sixty.

There’s a lot of ego in the car world, and having a car with massive horsepower, that’s completely unusable on the street, somehow tends to be viewed as masculine, while lightweight roadsters tend to be viewed as feminine, even though they’re often way more fun. Women don’t have ego, that’s why they’re spotted driving cars that are way more fun. And I’m at fault for this as well, buying the STI rather than the WRX. Did I really need the extra 40 HP and super sophisticated AWD system? No, but it had over 300 HP and that’s a selling point. It has more LSD than a nightclub and as a result never loses traction. But the WRX is significantly cheaper, just as quick on city streets, and the new one has an amazing engine.

It’s not that I don’t love the STI, but it’s that I’ve discovered that I personally have a lot more fun in cars that weigh less and are RWD. But, light weight RWD cars tend to be incredibly impractical, which is why I previously haven’t had one. So instead of having an STI and an Integra, I’m thinking of buying something super practical, and something light weight and RWD.