If you'll allow me to be a bit inside baseball for a moment, automakers set up media sites with press releases, images, and videos we use to bring you the stories you read here every day. I was looking for something else entirely on Subaru's Japan site, and stumbled on an incredible archive of press material on its old cars. Brochures of early Impreza WRX STIs, photos of weird twin-turbo flat-fours, and all sorts of cool cars we didn't get in America.
It's a little hard to find what you're looking for, but just click on the model, and go back through the generations. There's so much there, including models that I—someone who thought they knew a lot about cars—had never even heard of before. There's the Vivio Bistro, which was a retro-inspired version of Subaru's Vivio kei truck. Or how about the Legacy S402, a STI version of Subaru's mid-sizer, which was developed at the Nürburgring.
I gravitate towards the Impreza WRX STIs. There are so many cool variants over the years, like the crazy-body-kitted S201 and the 2006 Spec-C Type RA-R, with its factory mismatched seats. This is only scratching the surface, too. I don't have the time to dig all the way into the archive, at least not during the work day, but I know what I'll be doing later.
If you've got the time, we highly recommend heading on over.
Gallery: Subaru Media Archive
