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The real deal?
4 years ago
Prodrive's P25 will cost £552,000 in the UK
There is just something so prosaic about the shape. Seeing the prototype P25 in the metal and carbon parked in the Cathedral Paddock at the Goodwood Festival of Speed did nothing to allay my anxieties. I had to do a double take initially. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it still looked like a Subaru Impreza. Amply arched for sure, but it’s still an old Subaru that sits in that slightly awkward age group of modern classics that haven’t yet gone through the full fashion cycle and matured from merely old to interestingly dated and newly stylish.
I heard several people say that the wheels looked at least an inch too large as well. And while I know the P1 had grey rims, I can’t help thinking it would have been more crowd-pleasing to see some gold in the arches, aping the 22B. After all, it is meant to be a restomod of that particular two-door limited edition. Isn’t it?
Well, no. At least, that’s not how I came away thinking about it after speaking to David Lapworth and Richard Thompson, two of the Prodrive gurus behind it. For a start, the mere fact that they have been involved changes the complexion of the whole project and moves it away from other restomods because they have helped create the most famous Subarus in motorsport. It would be like Roland Kussmaul and Norbert Singer teaming up to make a restomod 911. With their engineering input you’d want the car no matter what it looked like, because you’d know what lay beneath was going to be special. Same with the P25.
"You feel first gear engage as much as you hear it. A heavy-duty drivetrain primed. Positivity is the name of the game and as a driver you need to live up to that"
The impression I got from Lapworth and Thompson was that this won’t really be a restomod. It will be more like an early Noughties WRC car made slightly more civil for the road than a 22B improved and uprated. And while you might think that sounds like two ways of reaching the same destination, I don’t think it is. I love the 22B and I adore the way that it drives, but it is definitely a road car not a competition car in terms of the intensity of the experience. Driving a top-line rally car from 20 or 25 years ago is, well, incredible…
Take the ex-McRae Impreza I was lucky enough to drive recently. You feel first gear engage as much as you hear it. A heavy-duty drivetrain primed. Positivity is the name of the game and as a driver you need to live up to that. Hesitancy has no place in a WRC car. Let in the clutch and you’re snatching second almost immediately. Keep throwing gears at it. Feed it ratios like it’s a ravenous shoal of piranhas. There’s the sense that if you’re not doing something, then you’re probably doing something wrong.
In corners, the agility is almost alarming at first. You turn the front wheels but the way the whole car pivots is almost as though there’s some aggressive rear-wheel steering in the mix. As such, you don’t need much lock, just a flick and then back on the throttle, letting the diffs do their thing, stabilising a slide, lobbing another gear at it as you adjust the angle and keep the flow heading for the next corner.
"Now I know what’s gone into and what it could and should be like to drive, I’m a little less perplexed by the price. Now I’m just slightly dejected by it, on account of rather wanting one"
Get it right and it feels like you are sitting at the pivot point of this fabulously frenzied flow. Crazy but curiously calm. Depending on the age and specific WRC regulations that the car is built to, there will be differing levels of physicality needed but, in my experience, the overall sensations are the same. It’s everything you’d hope for from watching McRae, Burns, Solberg and the rest. A car imbued with superhero qualities that allows the driver to glimpse the three-left-over-crest-don’t-cut-and-four-right-plus world that we’ve all heard Grist, Reid and Mills narrating.
So why not just buy a WRC car? After all, they have number plates and you could certainly purchase an S5 or S6 WRC machine with real provenance for the same price as (or less than) a P25. But unless you were heading to the next special stage, you wouldn’t want to drive a genuine WRC car very far. Don’t get me wrong, it would be fun, but it would also be the very embodiment of what is often referred to as NVH – noise, vibration and harshness. The beauty of something like the P25 is that it should have a semblance of usability. It will give you the same tingles but won’t feel like an effort.
The P25 will have a better power-to-weight ratio as well. It was clear that the specs aren’t really that near being finalised, despite the apparently authoritative press release that went out before Goodwood, but David Lapworth suggested over 450bhp rather than that stated 400bhp. At less than 1200kg it will also come in under the regulation 1230kg for a WRC car.
Catchpole was fortunate enough to drive this ex-McRae Prodrive Impreza
I’m not sure the interior will ever approach the work done by Singer or Eagle, but perhaps it might look out of place if it did? It certainly needs to be of a comparable fit and finish, but I think it actually should retain some semblance of the ordinary. Maybe that’s cutting it too much slack. I certainly got the impression that there could be quite a gap between a four-seat lux spec and a two-seat, half-cage RS spec, with the latter definitely being the preference of the engineers.
Of course ‘needs’ is entirely wrong, because they’re all sold. It doesn’t matter in the slightest if you or I struggle with the idea of that enormous price soap-barred on the windscreen of a Subaru. Even if it were an appropriate £3k more. And actually, now that I’ve understood what it is, now I know what’s gone into and what it could and should be like to drive, I’m a little less perplexed by the price. Now I’m just slightly dejected by it, on account of rather wanting one. Because the proposition of any road car with genuine WRC car dynamics is at least as appealing as any supercar with faint F1 racer connections.
