If you’re a car enthusiast, more specifically a big fan of the Subaru STI brand, you should know that the Subaru Tecnica International (STI) brand is celebrating its 30th anniversary this week. That’s right, 30th anniversary because the brand is a lot older than you think.
Founded in April 2, 1988, the first car introduced by Subaru STI was a turbocharged Legacy, the RS RA from 1989, which was available on in a limited 100-unit run of Ceramic White cars. The RS RA produced 220 horsepower, which for 1989 was very good and exciting. In the same year, three STI_modified Legacy Turbos were used to break the 50,000 lm, then the 100,000 km FIA World Speed Endurance records. The average speed was 138.78 mph, for 447 hours, 44 minutes and 9.887 seconds. That’s a lot of driving, to say the least.
The first actual STI-branded Subaru car was the Japanese-market Legacy STI back in 1992, and then Impreza WRX STI that followed two years later. Things really started to kick off from there because STI vehicles were the stuff of Gran Turismo gaming for most Subaru enthusiast, until the STI arrived in the US in 2004. That’s when the first US model was the 300-horsepower WRX STO, a Peter Stevens-designed “Blob Eye” of the second-generation Impreza.
Taking a look at the bigger picture and how far the STI brand has come, it stands at three WRC championships, 47 WRC wins, four Nürburgring endurance wins and a Nordschleife production sedan lap record that was set last year. Speaking in terms of STI’s 30th anniversary year’s production cars that will become available for everyone, there will be limited-eviction WRX STI Type RA and a STI-tuned BRZ tS slated for 2018.
