Prodrive Commemorates 25th Anniversary of Subaru Impreza’s WRC Win With 400-HP Paddle-Shift P25

Prodrive, the company behind Subaru’s 1990s WRC success, is commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Impreza World Rally Car’s winning WRC debut with a run of restored and upgraded Imprezas badged P25.

The UK firm built the original Impreza works rally cars for Subaru’s WRC program and says the limited run of 25 new cars will take inspiration from both the rally car and the legendary 22B road car Subaru of Japan built to mark its overall victory in the 1997 championship.

Prodrive will unveil the P25 at the Goodwood Festival of Speed next month and has opted to release only a single sketch and some very basic technical details ahead of that unveil. The picture shows a two-door first-generation Impreza that looks, wheels aside, almost exactly like a 22B, and appears to be finished in the same Sonic blue. That might lead you to believe the P25 is a straightforward continuation car of the kind Aston Martin and Jaguar have been pumping out in recent years.

But Prodrive says that modern technology ensures the P25 is more powerful, lighter and handles better than an original Impreza. It confirms that the engine is a 2.5-liter flat-four producing “in excess of” 400 hp (406 PS) and is mated to a six-speed semi-automatic paddle-shift transmission instead of the original Impreza’s five-speed manual. Prodrive also claims that the P25 will make extensive use of carbon fiber to reduce the weight of the chassis.

Original Impreza 22B (credit: 4 Star Classics)

The original 22B was built by Subaru in Japan, but 400 of the 424 were earmarked for the home market meaning thousands of Impreza fans elsewhere in the world missed out. That led Prodrive to create the visually similar, but slightly less exotic, P1 for European fans.

Dave Richards, Prodrive’s founder, was apparently the man responsible for coming up with the concept. “The original 22B Impreza is considered the most iconic of Subarus and highly sought after,” he said. “We wanted to enhance everything that made that car so special by applying the very latest technology to create our own modern interpretation of a car that’s established a place in motoring history.”

An icon redefined, this is P25.
25/05/22 #p25 #prodrive #iconredefined #comingsoon pic.twitter.com/F1FpN2Z3Up

— Prodrive (@prodrive) May 18, 2022

Richards’ P25 development team included McLaren F1 designer Peter Stevens, who created the the original rally cars’ look, and Prodrive technical director David Lapworth, who was responsible for the engineering side of the WRC program 25 years ago.

Prodrive says it is now taking expressions of interest and the first of the 25 cars will be delivered later this year. There’s no word on price, but we’d guess you’re going to need a supercar-sized budget to get your name on the list.