From spending frosty mornings watching cars tackle Canberra’s notorious ‘Mineshaft’ to eventually managing Subaru’s Championship-winning team during the 1980s, Cliff Chambers has a long association with rallying. In this 10-part series, he takes a look back at the cars that have been most influential in the sport.
Subaru had for decades enjoyed rally success before building its Impreza-based WRX and taking on other Japanese brands in the quest for World Rally glory.
The company’s early activity included sending teams from Japan to contest in Australia’s Southern Cross rallies, supplying cars at subsidised prices to Australian Rally Championship entrants during the mid-1980s, and fielding a high-profile quartet of runners for the 1987 African Safari.
The WRX was fundamentally different from those early cars being based as it was on the Impreza platform, meaning its All-Wheel Drive system operated constantly via a centre differential. It also had only one set of ratios, eliminating the low-range transfer case which was a source of grief in earlier RX Turbos.
Subaru’s first WRX World Rally Championship victory came in 1994. A year later the ‘Rex’ took both the WRC Drivers’ title – in the hands of Colin McRae – and the Manufacturers’ award.
1996 and 1997 saw Subaru continue to dominate the Manufacturers’ title, with a variety of prominent drivers contributing to its point score.
A period of Mitsubishi ascendency – stay tuned for part nine – then followed, before Subaru rebounded in 2001 with Richard Burns winning the Drivers’ title. His victory was followed by Petter Solberg in 2003, who became the first Norwegian World Rally Champion.
In Australia, the WRX’s endured a period of total dominance from 1996 to 2002 in the hands of NZ-born Peter ‘Possum’ Bourne. The Kiwi flyer would also contest World Rally and Asia-Pacific events, winning in 1993 and 1994, delivering Subaru Australia no fewer than seven consecutive Australian Drivers’ Championships in a variety of Impreza WRXs.
Following Bourne’s untimely death in 2003, Victorian Cody Crocker won three more championships in a WRX STi.
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