WRX STI Type RA NBR Special: Time for Coffee?
There's a NotImpreza with lots of letters going after a 'ring record, but is it even a road car?
Some background first, however. You'll remember last year Alfa Romeo set a wild - and the term isn't used lightly here - 7min 32sec Nordschleife lap with a Giulia Quadrifoglio; that made it the fastest four-door car around the track. Then Volvo popped up a couple of weeks ago with a vid of the S60 Polestar, claiming it had the swiftest saloon lap with a 7min 51sec. Huh? Well this was done before the Giulia's lap, Volvo sitting on it for a year and so claiming it broke the 'then record'. You need to wheel out that 500hp concept chaps, that should do the trick. Mercedes-AMG may well have a contribution to make as well, with its range of V8 four-door hooligans and new-found track kudos with the GT R.
But now Subaru is having a crack at a lap record for a 'four-door sedan'; note there isn't a mention of the word 'production' in there. This video is our first look at the Type RA NBR Special - oh Japanese naming conventions, how we've missed you - with more information due tomorrow. And, well, they aren't messing around.
To all intents and purposes this seems to be a race car, with very little attempt to hide the fact. It looks like a cross between the WRX STI that Mark Higgins used to smash the TT record last year and the SP 3T-spec car that was running third in class at the N24 before retiring. Very serious, in other words.
Apparently the car will be attempting the record later in the summer, so stay tuned for that. Will it be a road car? While it's unlikely to be offered over here, a mental Subaru special is something we haven't seen for a fair while and would surely please fans. But if the car here is representative of just what the Type RA NBR will be, the track is the only place it's going to be driven. And the pursuit of Nurburgring records will have got one stage sillier still. More news soon!
When we raced the Nurburgring 24 in 2012 we always had a cheap phone gaffa taped to the side of the dashboard as a 'just in case'
1. This year's STI developed Nurburgring 24 hour race car as featured in the news clicker for this thread
2. The Prodrive prepared time attack car ( for want of a better description) , IOM vehicle derived, or not, which will do it's piece at some point.
Can't help thinking that Prodrive + Subaru is currently a massively missed road car opportunity.
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