[Music] you remember the WRX right well we certainly do in fact we recommended the WRX so often so many times on our podcast and elsewhere that we actually stopped taking submissions where the answer was WRX let's just say you're looking for a four-door manual all-wheel drive turbocharged car and you've got about 25 000 to spend you would recommend the WRX constantly we talked about it less because it was a known commodity and it was improving at an absolute glacial pace so as a result there wasn't something new or interesting to talk about in the Subaru WRX the 2022 WRX was reintroduced on Subaru's Global platform as the VB generation but we're wondering what else competes against this car as an affordable four-door do-it-all dead car fun car well the alarm it has kind of stolen the Subaru's Thunder now I know that you'll launcher n is only front wheel drive but truly if you're looking for something with driving feel the Elantra end cannot be ignored Great Cars Great roads and all the reasons we love to drive road trips comparisons test drives and podcasts this is everyday driver this is the Dual clutch version of the Elantra in that's right paddles are here which means it has that little extra bump in power as well this one has 286 horsepower 289 pound-feet of torque so it's more than the Subaru but they're very comparable in terms of people have talked about well the DCT is the way you have to get this thing because of course you have that little bit of bump in power but also because of the NGS button is back in grin shift turbo boost I mean it should just say boost but whatever okay in-grin shift the button it gives you 20 seconds of Turbo over boost yeah if you want that button you have to buy the DCT and I love pdks and dcts and anything to a clutch they're precise they're excellent and they're a lot of fun to drive the transmission and being able to shift so quickly kind of makes the chassis even more finely tuned in this car you know what haven't even put it into sport mode yet there we go [Music] oh that's different listen to that the farts on the up shift yes hello in mode shifting and downshifting and side shifting it's just shifting lots of shifting this car is like your your Junior High Athletic coach who just really wants everybody to have a good time it's like it's applauding you all the time it breaks into a plus good job you good job good job on that corner good job on letting off the gas applause applause applause of course I prefer the actual involvement of a manual transmission but this is so quick the power is excellent I'm not even shifting that's the transmission doing it itself in in mode on fire mode it doesn't do as good of a job as say a Porsche pdk but yeah this Canyon Road it does a great job of navigating and you know what the paddles feel good they're just a small click the traveling isn't very far but they actually the action feels good on these paddles it doesn't feel cheap so many manufacturers have just taken the zf8 speed which is a great transmission it just turned it in through their automatic option key and Hyundai said no we're not doing that we're making an in-house dual clutch it was first in the Veloster end it's now in the Kona end it's in this but here as good as the manual is I would take the DCT I would try this and have a ball okay I gotta actually go off end mode now because I mean it's just there's there's so much Applause I'm getting a complex about how great I must be doing and I'm not doing that great also there's so much verbal and overrun happening that I feel like I can't even talk to you without being interrupted it just constantly wants to say something have I told you how great this is have I told you how much fun it is just just calm down let me talk for a minute foreign [Music] we're out here on one of our favorite twisty roads and I am reminded of the power this engine makes by the way it's a new 2.4 liter engine but it's not new it's the same one in the Outback in the ascent 271 horsepower 258 pound-feet of torque which is a lot for a WRX in fact that's upper levels of what they've ever come with technically this is slower and less powerful than the Elantra but I think you'd have trouble telling remember the light switching nature of this car I always remembered how you would wait for it like you're watching a trebuchet you sort of wind up and you're watching the steps and counting down to when the payload gets launched into outer space this has a torque curve that's been improved from prior wrx's and it does have power pretty much right away there's no sensation of it's going to get more later it feels like oh this has got quite a bit of power the minute you breathe on the accelerator and I cannot discuss the power without telling you about the big news it has a CVT that's right a CVT everywhere Subaru refers to it they refer to it as how awesome this transmission is how much fun it is which is the Subaru performance transmission it's the automatic it's the spt it's a CVT it's a continuously variable transmission why on Earth would Subaru put a CVT in a performance car I'm still not sure and I wasn't sure until I drove it if you've ever wondered does anybody make a great continuously variable transmission yes the answer is Subaru and they've done it here in the WRX I mean Subaru is claiming 30 percent quicker upshifts and 50 faster downshifts and they're right this feels just like the DCT I'm shocked every now and then it'll drag a shift and you go oh that's right this is this is that different kind of transmission is it this isn't a normal transmission but you're not going to care because most of the time it's so fast and so fun the ratios go by really quickly of course they're all made up ratios because it's the CVT but Subaru has mastered how to take a CVT which is typically the killer of all fun and turn it into a great automatic transmission for this car I'm genuinely very impressed I don't have any complaints about the transmission and I would say if you want the auto get this one as impressed as I am with how good it is I'm curious about how long it will last and I can't stand how it sounds and I'm talking in regular driving just driving around I'm willing to accept more mechanical thrash when we're hooning cars I'm willing to accept that but just driving around I don't like how this sounds that's the problem with cvts you'll never be able to get rid of the sound just because of the inherent Construction I do think the power in this car feels underreported I mean that 271 horsepower 258 pound-feet of torque this feels like more than that it feels every bit as powerful as the Elantra in fact a little bit more powerful than the Elantra of course it has more weight to work with and that's a problem but they've done a great job with this power delivery with this transmission the whole setup is nothing but quick oh and one more thing Subaru leaves you in sport mode after you turn the car off so when you come back turn on the car again you're back in sport mode the Elantra does not do that many cars do not do that hello yeah throttle response is my friend I like that now part of that is the Sport Plus tuning which really does help if I go back here to comfort now the accelerator fell asleep I mean there's a lot of effort to be like oh oh we're doing something I mean there's major changes here not just in the suspension but also in the way the car responds everyday driver is brought to you by Griot's Garage use the code e driver for 10 off your order we are revisiting the handling in the WRX something that has always fascinated me because it's not that Subaru magic trick still you know the one where you unwind the wheel add power and the car pulls through and turns in sharper than it did before and I love that about this car all the understeer just goes away because you added power I'm glad that by changing to the new platform that little magic trick didn't go away it also comes with fully adjustable dampers when you actually hit the mode button down here on the steering wheel things actually change in the ride and handling suspension did get stiffer there are changes you can do even individually and you can figure out your individual mode just like you can on the Hyundai I actually kind of like the defaults of the Sport Plus mode and in this spt format this GT trim has 45 to front 55 to rear and you do feel like it's a little bit weird biased of course you can move things around a little bit if you would like but what Subaru is doing is by not currently offering an STI they're trying to make this the performance version that competes that's really what the GT is this car still exfoliates the asphalt just like all the prior versions did it's astounding how sticky this car is but there's no steering feel it's all gone all the personality that I loved on prior wrx's is missing it's over boosted and zibro is claiming a natural steering feel out of this it doesn't feel natural at all I'm just pointing the car like a video game and adding power the steering here is lighter than it is in the Elantra but doesn't gain any feel other wrx's and STIs had a much more granular feel to the steering that the effort was harder and it felt like it was really transmitting information this doesn't transmit information and it's not like this has no steering feel and the Elantra has tons the Elantra has a little bit but this is essentially mute this has a slower steering ratio than than a launcher and it weighs over 300 pounds more now the all-wheel drive system and the CVT itself add to some of that weight but it doesn't take away any of the capability that this has this still feels incredibly good on the background and it just chews through things with a lot of agility the sensation of grip on all four corners it's much more pleasing than the actual steering itself the steering is light and video game like but the traction you can tell that there's a ton of traction all the time and I do love that shove from the back half of the car the and by virtue of this car being just a little bit lifted just a little bit slightly rally I'm not talking about the cladding I'm talking about the ride height and the Rough and Tumble nature of this car you've got sports car goodness and you can just bash over bad cement and bad paint that's not a bad combination also it comes with these fantastic Recaro seats that really are they're they're superb you sit and you go yeah we're gonna do some driving now this makes you feel like you want to take it to the track but yet they're comfortable for commuting if I go back down here to Comfort mode I'm just gonna chill for a minute yeah you can just chill in your WRX now just just calm down that's never been a WRX thing ever I have 8 000 Subaru safety systems that are all warning me that I'm not doing it as safe as I could be it's a WRX I didn't buy this for safety because they have this WRX on This Global platform now it has to take some of those global platform traits now that allows it to be much more modern in the interior it allows it to have a lot of things that bring it into modern technology and I understand that can feel decaffeinated which the Elantra can't it never gets quite as aggressive as the Elantra feels and it also gets much more calm than the Elantra is [Music] it's really just a battle of alternative transmissions in these two cars and yes again I know this is from Bell Drive but you know what there's more engagement here because you get that limited slip the corner carving differential which is something the Subaru doesn't have the handling on the Elantra in is so good you forget what the drive wheels are I mean yes you can reveal it it's front-wheel drive there's nothing at all helping you on the back half of the car and you know that physically you must be murdering the front wheels but it hides it so well you so rarely feel like you're even approaching the edges of this car in a corner and you can just Chuck it in there's resistance here to the steering wheel it's not so light and over boosted the faster you go the better it gets it's one of those [Music] this Elantra has a sharper steering rack than the one in the WRX and that combined with the way they have set this up for turn in you can completely fine tune your performance front-wheel drive rear-wheel drive don't even care just put it exactly where you'd like the car that's a feeling that exceeds the steering in the WRX interesting because the WRX feels more grounded than this all the time there's resistance and you can understand what the wheels are doing and it lets it through it lets this car have some personality I mean the WRX has personality too but it doesn't really share it this one just kind of gives it all to you that corner carving differential is real it works very well when you hop on back to back you can definitely tell this is only using the front half of the car but it doesn't hold it back at all this really is concerned about how the back half rotates which is one of the things that hides the front wheel drive downsides of a car like this and actually just makes it crazy fun all the time because of how much power both of these cars have going through their front wheels neither car has the greatest steering feel and I noticed on the manual transmission version of this car it has the Precision of BMW which makes sense because of Albert Biermann who was the M division engineer at BMW for the longest time who went to Hyundai and started giving their products the Precision of BMWs but it doesn't have the steering feel that I want the good news is I feel like the DCT has made it have torque steer that it never had it's a new party trick now this car weighs about 3 200 pounds 300 pounds less than the WRX that more than 300 pound difference can be felt this feels like a lighter less substantial car than the WRX now what's your preference when you have an all-around card you want to feel a little more like robust and grounded because this feels a little light and flighty compared to the WRX maybe you prefer the more grounded feel and if so this is going to feel maybe a little too dirty a little too much hummingbird going on here I'd like a little less Adolescent and a little more grown-up the WRX I'm referring to is grown up that's weird I don't care that the Elantra n is front wheel drive only I really don't this is the car I'd rather be driving over the WRX lighter more playful more just ready to be your fun companion than the WRX is and this is down two Drive Wheels speed is easy and the direction changes are among some of the best cars out there and unless you live in an area where you absolutely need all-wheel drive why not just get this [Music] everyday driver is brought to you by powerstop brake upgrades made easy both of these are worth their reputation they're worth what you've heard about them they are both excellent cars to drive and they're usable with a surprising amount of back seat space and four-wheel doors in a trunk and that's really cool that you could buy one car and have it do all of your fun things and have it do all of your real life thing this WRX is much faster and much more agile on a back road than I was expecting it to be I feel like all of the discussion about the WRX has been well that's a big disappointment it's not a disappointment it's actually a fantastic car if you like these you'll like this one I do like this car and I like it a lot better than I thought I would The Styling is only good in person [Music] when I saw photos of this car I had dry heaves and then in person my attitude is totally changed it looks aggressive I don't think this is necessarily an attractive generation and it also falls prey to the current Subaru trend of everything should have body cladding worked well for Pontiac didn't it I've noticed that the lines on this car are very suggestive of the cool Concepts that Subaru has shown us over the years the body side is tall the greenhouse is Compact and low which means it's got this rally look except there are no rally cars that have as much black plastic cladding as this one does but Subaru spent a lot of time talking about the body cladding on this in fact the texture of the under tray and also on these fender flares is a special texture for aerodynamics so it's slippery okay there's actually vents Behind The Wheels on the front body cladding there have been conversations here about arrow in an attempt to make this body cladding not just be here and look like a Subaru thing but also makes sense as far as the interior layout is concerned I feel like the instrument panel is like a glass cockpit I like what Subaru has done to make this the focal point and it's large but it's not Tesla big this screen is massive it's a little bit laggy unfortunately and then the vents they're actually pretty stylish and good looking they're they could be a little bit more functional but they're decent there's a lot of surface breakup I feel like super wanted to add the screen but just keep everything about the driving experience and buttons where you know they should be and on the GT you get the suede that's right you want the suede the problem is that pushes the price up you're pushing 43 Grand on this car at least on the 2022 version the seating position here is not as good as the Elantra end you sit up very high and vertical now if you like kind of an SUV style seating position you'll like this a lot these seats are amazing the position is just not as great as I'd like it to be this has decent rear seat space and a cavernous trunk now this car costs just under thirty six thousand dollars and I think it looks more expensive than it actually is [Music] there's a lot going on stylistically but imagine that you are tasked with making a four-door sedan look interesting and exciting styling wise I just can't do it I can't like the Elantra and white blue black I just don't care I don't find this an attractive car theme is bold down the shoulder line especially in the the front driver and passenger doors there's so many busy shapes going on look at how they're resolved at the rear the rear trunk lid is actually kind of like a spoiler and then it's got another spoiler on top of that and it's successful it works the WRX is not a beauty queen either so I'm left a little bit stuck and I guess the conclusion is I don't love either of them but the WRX is I guess a little better looking that's a backhanded compliment isn't it jumping into the interior the shapes relate and I like the interior better I like this variation on what Mercedes has done I like the extension of the screen very good user interface and everything here makes sense while also having buttons available that's very nice as well this is very easy to use and learn instantly having trouble deciding which seats are better but I think Hyundai wins they feel lighter they feel a little bit tighter around me the Elantra in actually is more usable in some ways than the base Elantra it has thinner seats which gives more rear leg room however you lost your ability to have as much trunk space because you gained that red scaffolding thing in the trunk which does actually add stiffness in fact about 30 percent more this has a better seating position than the WRX you can get lower into the cabin if you like a higher seating position the WRX is probably going to feel better and that one has better seats and the seat bottom cushion this is excellent I want to spend time here the recaros are great in the WRX I think the Hyundai has a slight Advantage here now you can get What's called the premium trim of the WRX you can get it at about the same cost and weight as the Elantra however you of course are in the manual then which is a score but you lose these really good seats you lose the adjustable dampers those are things that actually make this WRX even more of a standout and if you get it down to the prices you would expect the WRX to be then those things are gone I cannot tell you to buy this car because as good as it is and as much fun as I'm having I'd rather have a manual transmission and if I'm gonna buy a car I'd rather have the manual version of the Elantra I'm so conflicted I'm impressed with what Subaru has done and the choices they've made are absolutely Justified to put this combination of engine and transmission together I feel like this car has its own personality but it's hiding it from you it's not really willing to share what we're left with is a very fun car and a very capable car probably beyond what you've heard about this generation WRX certainly better than I was led to believe I do think the Elantra is a little bit more fun and it's significantly cheaper even loaded [Music] Subaru has impressed me but I like the styling better on this I like how this car drives better and there is no question in my mind if I'm spending the money you can save money here hit what I think is the better car it's hard for me to pick front wheel drive over all-wheel drive because front-wheel drive is not something I typically connect with and I really like the sensation of feeling a push from behind me whether rear-wheel drive or all-wheel drive and the Subaru does that very well but this is the laugh and if I'm buying an all-purpose four-door that I want to have fun with too this just offers a little bit more fun [Music] thank you