The alphabet soup before you represents the biggest performance car battle this year. The RSX is, of course, the offspring of the all-conquering Integra Type R. Aimed at a broader market, Acura's RSX Type-S is less of a singular tool of speed than was the Type R, but it does, nonetheless, deliver more power and more torque from a similarly rev-happy i-VTEC powerplant. Subaru's WRX, on the other hand, is being hailed from all sides as the new king of the tuner cars. A turbocharger, all-wheel drive and a genuine rally heritage are powerful weapons to bring to the battle for tuner car superiority.
With price tags that land within $325 of each other, this is a battle that will be fought with the wallets of countless enthusiasts. With a war that pits a wagon vs. coupe battle, however, it's a good bet the product planners at Acura and Subaru, staring at reams of demographic data, probably never saw this one coming.
Why a wagon? Why not? The WRX wagon is far more popular than Subaru anticipated, and the waiting lists are longer than those for the sedan. We've tested the WRX sedan twice now (once with the standard 16-inch wheels and once with the optional 17-inch BBS wheels), so it seemed time to get some new data. On paper, the wagon isn't that different from the sedan. It packs an extra 80 lbs, weighing a hefty 3,165 lbs, and it has a track width that is 20 mm narrower than the sedan. Horsepower, suspension calibration, and everything else that would affect the driving experience, however, are exactly the same.
And it is the driving experience-and little else-that matters. We put both cars through their paces for a week, intent on learning two things: which is the better performance car when it comes to real, on-the-limit driving, and which is the better choice as a tuner car. Our quest took us to the future site of the California Speedway's new drag strip for data gathering on acceleration and handling, and then to some real-world mountain roads to see what those numbers meant behind the wheel.
On paper, both cars have surprisingly similar power-to-weight ratios, each coming in slightly on either side of 13.9 lbs per horsepower (the lighter, less powerful RSX has the slight advantage), but the Subaru's 75 lb-ft advantage in torque output makes itself known anytime you put your foot down. Even with taller gearing and the inevitably greater drivetrain losses from its all-wheel drive, the WRX feels stronger most of the time.
The drag strip bore out this stronger feeling, despite the fact that both cars were slower than we expected. Perhaps because we picked it up with less than 400 miles, or perhaps because of the 90-degree weather, the best we could squeeze from the RSX after a dozen runs was a 15.6-second quarter mile at 90.2 mph. We were surprised by the slow time, not only because the power-to-weigh ratio suggests something faster, but also because two other tests performed within weeks of ours (with different cars) showed faster times. Car and Driver reported 14.8 at 96.0 mph, while another magazine landed right in the middle. Both those times were corrected for weather conditions and altitude, while ours is a raw time at just over 1,000 feet of elevation and the aforementioned 90 degrees. Since turbocharged and naturally aspirated engines respond differently to different weather conditions, we don't feel comfortable applying a universal correction factor to these two cars.
The WRX wasn't the fastest we had tested either, running a 14.7-second quarter mile at 92.0 mph, compared to the 14.6 at 90.7 mph and 14.3 at 93.5 mph we reported for the last two sedans we tested. Despite the highly variable times, it is still clear that regardless of weather, break-in mileage or prevailing voodoo, the WRX accelerates faster than the RSX.
The character of the two cars when pedal hits metal, however, is completely different. The RSX wails with the race-bred urgency we've come to expect from high-output Hondas. The tone is a little deeper and a little coarser than the Integra's B18C, but the family resemblance is still there. Even with i-VTEC, which adds continuously variable intake cam timing to the normal two-step VTEC system, and an additional 200cc to work with, the RSX still has relatively little to offer before 6000 rpm. As we've come to expect from Honda, however, the engine is matched to an absolutely sublime gearbox with six ratios so closely spaced that you can easily keep the engine in its 2000 rpm-wide powerband.
In the complete re-design that transformed the Integra into the RSX, the old car's solid, direct, rod-actuated shifter was replaced with a cable shifter. Most cable shifters could be better described as gear selectors, sliding from gate to gate with little sense that there's actually a transmission on the other side of the cables. The RSX's is unique in the world of cable shifters, feeling light, direct, and remarkably communicative. It's also very quick shifting-perhaps quicker than even the Type R. Using it is such a joy, one tester reported a compulsion to constantly up shift and down shift on the highway-just for fun.
All that shifting is completely unnecessary in the WRX, where a powerband nearly twice as wide as the RSX's and an engine note muffled by a turbocharger, three catalytic converters and a muffler makes acceleration feel comparatively effortless. Below about 3500 rpm, the Subaru's turbocharged flat four is exactly that. Flat. But once the pounding exhaust pulses make their way past the first catalytic converter and work their magic on the turbo impeller, the WRX surfs a smooth wave of thrust, all the way to redline.
The engines, the handling, and really the whole driving experience of both cars, reflect the racing heritage of their parent companies. Sit in the RSX and you immediately notice how small and fat the steering wheel is, how well placed and firm the pedals are, how the brake pedal is completely free from slop, and how the shifter falls immediately to hand. The RSX feels at home on a racetrack, bred as it is from a long and decorated history in Formula 1 and CART. Its handling balance is surprisingly neutral, especially considering its mass-market orientation. Throw it into a sweeper and all four tires are in on the action. In tighter turns, however, and when pushed beyond the embarrassingly low limits of the all-season Michelin Pilot MXM4 tires, dumb, squealing understeer is the inevitable result.
Maximizing grip with a strut front suspension means minimizing body roll, and that's exactly what the Type-S suspension calibration seems designed to do. Substantial anti-roll bars at both ends keep everything flat. Rear roll stiffness is high enough that it even tends to lift the inside rear tire slightly in hard corners. On the skidpad, this pays off with a cornering attitude that is easily controlled with the throttle, and in the slalom, the RSX is easily tossed from one cone to the next in a series of natural four-wheel drifts. In fact, despite rolling on your mom's tires, the RSX is only 0.2 mph slower than the Integra Type R through the cones. On the skidpad, however, the RSX's 0.84g of lateral grip shows what a big difference tires can make. The Type R, with smaller but stickier tires, pulled 0.91g.
The WRX wagon stumbled clumsily through the handling tests. Its 205/55-R16 Bridgestone RE92s may actually make a worse performance tire than the RSX's Michelins, and as a result, the WRX managed only 0.79g on the skidpad (the sedan we tested with the optional 215/45-R17 tires managed 0.84g last April). The slalom speed was equally disappointing, with the wagon's weightier rear sliding around a little too much for optimum speed. The wagon managed only 65.8 mph, while the last sedan we tested (with the same wheels and tires) managed 67.9 mph.
With preconceptions forged by these test numbers, we headed for the mountains and were immediately shocked to find the WRX faster and easier to drive on the narrow, challenging roads. While the RSX felt solid, balanced and precise in higher-speed sweepers, when the road narrowed, and the turns got tighter, front grip seemed to wash away and powering out of corners got increasingly difficult. Balancing the big surge of power from the high-rpm cams with the open differential was a real challenge, with a long, smokey peg-leg burnout being the normal result.
It all seems to come back to heritage. Most racetracks don't have switchbacks. Rally stages, do, however, and the tighter the road got, the more the WRX shone. The WRX feels funky at first. Its steering wheel is big, its engine is sluggish off boost, and its brake pedal has some slop, but once the turbo hits, everything starts to flow. Up to eighth-tenths, the WRX feels stable, secure, and rather dull. Push it hard, though, and it comes alive. Drop the throttle coming into a turn and the tail will slide around-more so with the wagon than the sedan-then stand on it and the car just powers out.
This behavior is not just for the benefit of Richard Burns wannabes, it will also save the ass of anybody trying to understeer off the road. Subarus used to have terrible control feel, but the shifter is now among the best, the steering is linear and direct, and the brakes are, well... at least a substantial improvement. Despite some initial sloppiness in the brake pedal, the brakes never faded, even when being pushed hard down 4,000 vertical feet of maniacally twisty road. The WRX's wider powerband makes gear selection less critical, simplifying the driving task when the road gets complicated.
Back to our original question: Which is the better performance car when it comes to real, on-the-limit driving? If open-track clubs are your main source of fast driving, the RSX is probably the better choice. Lighter weight plays heavily on the racetrack, and Subarus have never seemed in their element driven on a smooth racing line. Out on the road, however, where you don't get to practice each turn, where bumps, potholes and oil slicks mix it up with switchbacks and blind, changing-radius turns, our testers unanimously preferred the WRX.
And which is the better choice as a tuner car? Without a doubt, the WRX again gets the nod. The reasons are simple: First, turbocharged cars are always easier to modify than naturally aspirated cars, and second, the WRX's venerable drivetrain has been a tuner favorite in Japan, England and Australia for years, making tuner parts relatively abundant. By comparison, the all-new RSX will take some R&D before serious performance is available off the shelf.
Nobody is admitting it yet, but we're betting on a re-match between the RSX Type R and WRX STi in about a year. Odds are, we'll even get to throw a Lancer Evolution into the mix.