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A homage to homologation
2 years ago
The Prodrive P25 is unlike any other Impreza Catchpole's driven
Your right foot can now press the accelerator pedal to the stops, bringing the revs and boost up so that the exhaust sounds like a bunch of firecrackers have been lit. Then it’s smartly off the brake, while keeping your right foot planted. That distinctive broad bonnet scoop rises as the rear squats and all four wheels scrabble and snatch at every scrap of grip as first gear goes by in a mad flash with the electronics taking care of the upshift to second. You can feel the cambers and bumps beneath you as the car catapults off the line; as I said, billiard table tarmac isn’t necessary for this car.
And before you know it you’re braking for a corner. Throw the nose into the bend and you’ll feel something else that is special about this P25, because the front-end grip is astonishing. It’s more Evo than Impreza in its instant response, and almost as soon as you’ve turned in you want to get back on the throttle, the slightly soft rear will hunker down on the outside and you rely on the diffs to shuffle the torque, keep the car turning and punching you out. It requires commitment and trust in the set-up, you need to stay on the throttle and go with it, but what a feeling, what speed across the ground.
This car has genuine competition car DNA and brings back all the wonderful memories of the couple of times I’ve driven WRC Imprezas in the past. If this was my P25 I think I would soften it off a little, as the ride is resolute and I’d like it to be more relaxed. To that extent, I’d be interested to try it with slightly smaller, 18in wheels (provided they still fit around the big, progressive 380mm AP Racing brakes) and a bit more tyre sidewall.
"It’s more Evo than Impreza in its instant response, and almost as soon as you’ve turned in you want to get back on the throttle, the slightly soft rear will hunker down on the outside and you rely on the diffs to shuffle the torque, keep the car turning and punching you out"
The option of an H-pattern manual would have been nice too. Not because I don’t like the paddleshift, but just because the H-pattern that Prodrive uses in its rally cars is one of the very best I’ve ever tried. It has this blend of tight precision at the base of the lever and lightness of action at the top so that you barely have to initiate each shift, and the lever seems to know instinctively where it needs to go. I certainly hope that if Prodrive does another road car (and the rumours seem to suggest it will) it gets a manual.
A rebrand might be wise for the next car, too. A tweak of the marketing handbrake. This thought occurred to me a few weeks after driving the P25 when I was in something else rally-related: a Lancia Delta S4 Stradale, the road going version of the famous, ferocious Group B car that allowed Henri Toivonen’s talent to shine so brightly before sadly extinguishing it for good on Corsica in 1986.
With its two huge clamshells, spaceframe chassis and the first twin charger engine in a road car, it’s an extraordinary machine. But what also surprised me about it were its ergonomics and general sense of polish. I’d expected a limited-run, Italian homologation special to have felt compromised and awkward for the driver, with pedals, wheel and driver’s seat (designed by Zagato) all positioned with as much respect for the realities of human anatomy as a Barbie doll. Yet it felt remarkably together and easy to drive. The nice slick, easy gearshift helped too.
“Like all the Group B homologation road cars, it doesn’t have the skewed excess of power versus grip of a full-blown rally version, but like all the homologation road cars it does have an innate cool because of its very direct relationship to its Martini-liveried sibling”
This particular car, currently for sale with Girardo & Co, also had a ‘Potenziato’ upgrade, which saw the fitment of a larger turbo producing 300bhp instead of the standard 250bhp. It felt pleasingly potent, it was loud, it spat flames and apart from a slight unwillingness to hook up at the front (no front LSD in the Stradale version) it was really enjoyable to drive.
Like all the Group B homologation road cars, it doesn’t have the skewed excess of power versus grip of a full-blown rally version, but like all the homologation road cars it does have an innate cool because of its very direct relationship to its Martini-liveried sibling. Good or bad, everyone loves that link. And this is what got me thinking about the P25; it’s effectively an homologation special, just 25 years too late. If the WRC regs in 1997 had demanded the same 200 cars as the famous Appendix J (Article 256) did for Group B, then we might have seen something like a P25 back then.
Because that’s what it feels like, and is – a genuine WRC car with some added road manners. It’s not a restomod 22B or P1, it is far more extreme and closer in feel and engineering to a competition car. The only real difference in ethos between the P25 and S4 is that the Subaru has more power than the rally car, not less.
The term restomod isn’t actually used on Prodrive’s website, but it does describe the P25 as a ‘rally icon reimagined, redefined and recreated’, which feels awfully close. Paraphrasing is inevitable. And I’m not sure restomod carries as much kudos these days as it once did, what with it being applied somewhat willy-nilly. It’s an umbrella term that has grown to the size of a marquee. But what if Prodrive had positioned the P25 as an homologation homage? That, I think, would have been both more accurate and much more evocative. I’d like to see some more homologation homages.
Lead image by Evo magazine
