2023 Subaru WRX 2.4T AKA review

Subaru loves a WRX special edition. There have been a few of them over the years.

Remember the Crouching Tiger? The Ace of Spades? Those Hyper Blue ones? And the Saigo? And those are just from the last few generations; there have been more prior to these.

The latest is the AKA, Japanese for red and, as the badge says, they are all resplendent in their rouge hue. This is certainly a special bound to do well in Canterbury, given its winning red and black colour scheme.

And Wiggles fans will no doubt like it too, being the subject of one of the super group’s hits, the Big Red Car.

What you’re getting here is a WRX Premium kitted out with a few extras, but you pay the same money, $59,990, as a regular model.

Ten have been made available, half of those with a manual, the others with the auto. All are the same price, except the auto works out cheaper once the fees are paid.

AKA bits include the STI-branded 18-inch alloys and lower body kit with a black mesh grille (and a few AKA badges) while inside you have sports bucket seats, and an STI gear shifter and push button starter.

The only mechanical upgrade is an STI strut brace while the manual version gets STI cross-drilled rotors on the front.

While we rate the WRX as a great everyday performer, it’s not a huge seller for Subaru, with only 70 registered this year. And increased Clean Car fees don’t help. The Internet suggests not everyone is enamoured by the new WRX’s SUV-inspired wheel arches.

The latest craze stateside is to colour code them with the body. And what do you know, when we dropped the AKA back to the local dealership, there was a WRX parked out front with its arches wrapped to match the body.

And it does look good. We don’t mind the look, and the black arches work for the AKA, along with its black STI additions. But do those 18s look a bit lost under those enlarged guards?

Hmm, maybe at the rear, but we’d live with them rather than upgrading to 19s; the extra kilos on the end of the axles would conspire against the ride and handling mix of the WRX.

While the Premium model might not have the more accommodating comfort mode of the tS model with its adaptive dampers, we can live with the way this rides. Sure, you feel the worst of the bumps but it’s otherwise settled.

There’s no need to go through myriad set-up steps here either; there’s only a Mode button on the wheel to alter the throttle mapping and the protocols for the Sport Lineartronic transmission.

Okay, it’s a CVT… in a performance car. But it’s responsible for keeping the WRX relevant since its introduction back in the VA series from 2014.

For it gives the hard charger a more civil side. In the default ‘I’ mode, it makes for quite a silky powertrain on your way to the supermarket, taking advantage of the 2.4T’s boosted torque curve as it stretches its ratio long to keep the flat four burbling along below 2000rpm.

And that helps keep the average fuel use figure in the 10L/100km range. But you’re often tempted to click the mode into S, the altered throttle map gaining you quicker access to the 202kW, the ratio of the trans keeping itself shorter and therefore setting the engine to rev quicker when you accelerate.

It makes it feel more like a WRX. There are paddles too but they tend to go unused. The one thing we do miss is a harder launch action. The CVT is just a tad sluggish when you really boost it off the mark.

Further afield, the S# drive mode gets things really humming, the programming doing much to alleviate just about all the quirks of a CVT when you’re giving it some.

The trans effectively keeps itself pegged to the shorter steps on the belt, so the engine percolates for even better response, and ‘shifts up’ as you nudge the redline (a slightly low 6000rpm, but then it is an SUV engine). It even does an okay job of ‘shifting down’ when you brake for a bend.

And the WRX is still a faithful cornering servant; the brakes haul it up quick and straight, the diligent steering gets it turned smartly, the suspension manages the roll and the bumps while the AWD traction hauls it all off the curve.

Balancing the equation, you have four door practicalities, a sizeable boot (414L), and the CVT-equipped WRX also has all the safety bits that the manual model misses out on.

And that includes some of the convenience features like active cruise. While the Premium omits sat nav from the list of standard spec, smart phone connectivity is sorted, the screen is big and a few hard buttons ease operations for frequently used functions.

You don’t get leather trim or powered adjustment, but we can live without those too as the fabric lined seats are quite accommodating.

While the run of the AKA is likely spoken for by the time you get to read this, there will surely be another limited run of WRXs before this generation is done.