Saturday, October 29, 2011

2011 Subaru WRX STI

The 2011 Subaru WRX STI is a perfect example of a modern sports car. It has many features that most cars just aren’t found together. The first big feature that all Subaru’s have is the symmetrical all-wheel drive. What that means, is that all of the tires are having power given to them all the time, as opposed to just the front or back like most vehicles. A modification to only the STI's, is that they come with a switch to make only the back wheels have power running to them. This is for extreme driving purposes such as drifting. The WRX STI's are available with two different turboed motors. The smaller motor produces 265 horsepower and the larger high performance motor produces 305 horse power.
The motors that come in the Subaru are known as a Boxer engine. What makes these engines so different as well as superior is the stroke position of the pistons in relation to the crank. Most engines are typically found in inline or v designs. The inline style has all of the pistons lined up vertically over the crank, so they are very efficient. However, they also consume up a large area of space due to their length. The v design has half the pistons at about 30 degrees from vertical while the other half are found 30 in the other direction. The v design allows for much more pistons to be allowed in a smaller space solving the issue of the inline motor. There is one flaw, it cannot be as efficient because of the orientation of the pistons is not parallel. The Boxer motor solves both of these issues. Its pistons are positioned horizontally on each side of the motor, saving much and in theory are much more efficient. The 2011 Subaru WRX STI comes from a line of dependable, very well designed vehicles and is no different in its search for quality in the sports car category.

1 comment:

Mrs. Rohla said...

I had no idea that Subaru made a sports car. That's very interesting.