Did someone say baby-NSX?
Subaru has been on the up-and-up over the recent years, spurred on by strong sales of its Forester SUV (particularly in the North American market) as well as the XV crossover pretty much everywhere else. So far, those two cars have been the main showcase for their all-wheel drive USP, but remember when Subaru was closely associated with motorsport?
The same sense of reminiscence is still alive at Subaru’s headquarters of Tochigi, it would seem, as there’s some word of a new mid-engined sports car in the works. Most recently, the BRZ has been the only one of two options for the more spirited Subaru driver – the other being the WRX STI.
Interestingly, a source told Car and Driver that Subaru is testing a radical experimental prototype at the company’s proving grounds – and what could be more radical for Subaru than a mid-engined coupe, one that uses a turbocharged flat-four boxer engine to drive the rear wheels and, even more interestingly, two electric motors powering one front wheel each.
This recipe seems mirror the Subaru Viziv Future Concept slightly, at least in the inclusion of electric motors. The Viziv, however, uses the electric motors to augment the rear wheels.
This mystery-maybe-mid-engined Subaru: think of it as having the Viziv’s powertrain and layout, but reversed. It goes without saying that Subaru knows a thing or two about turbocharging and there’s a lot of performance and dynamic potential to be extracted from clever uses of electric motors.
If they indeed are working on a mid-engined or even a sports car of some kind that uses turbocharging and electric power, they could be about to stumble on a possible goldmine of enthusiasts that have had their interests piqued by the prospect of a fast hybrid Japanese sports car (Acura NSX) minus the high price tag.
There’s still very little solid information out there on this besides the very intriguing idea of a mid-engined Subaru sports car, too little even to make more than a few educated guesses. Guess we’ll have to wait until more information bubbles to the surface.
