2012 WRX Air Dam

Do you have a min legal height? Here roading infrastructure adheres to a standard. Any vehicles lowered below this can be ticketed but the real issue is they may scrape judder bars and can't get into fast food outlets etc. We see them adopting weird entry strategies to avoid wiping out their spoilers and sump pans. Dirt roads and snow banks excepted but if running on those then maybe a different vehicle is called for? Remember the old "gravel express" version of the wrx?

Never heard of gravel express. This WRX is bone-stock save the dealer-installed options which were all in the brochure, so that's STILL stock. I run a lot of dirt roads 'cuz I road rally (not rally racing, just driving down ordinary roads at legal speeds and that are open to the public) with the Sports Car Club of America, and... I just seem to wipe out this air dam. I've started parking WAAAAAY back from the tire bumpers and curbs in parking lots, which is something I can do 'cuz the vehicle is so short compared to the rest of them in the lot, but this is a PITA. Eventually I imagine I'll hit some dead animal in the road or something else and it'll be another $1K. Really disappointed that they wouldn't build such an air dam out of something flexible.

I understand. We had to move to Foresters to gain the clearance on our gravel roads but it was mainly center mufflers that got wiped out regularly due the center ridge on the roads in winter.

I have sympathy for your problem and its only nostalgia now but FYI I saw a lot of "gravel express" models out here because of the roads. They were a limited run by Subaru NLA but which still hold their value if you can find a SH one. I think maybe they were also called the "Outback Sport" in the non-turbo version. This from Wikipedia - " ... the 2.5 engine was introduced. In Japan, the Impreza Sport Wagon was offered with a similar approach to the Outback Sport, calling it the "Impreza Gravel Express" with the WRX turbocharged engine. Subaru discontinued the Gravel Express when the second generation Impreza was introduced due to very limited sales. The hoodscoop found on the American Outback Sport was non-functional but was probably included because the American and Japanese versions were built at the same factory in Japan"

If you find a picture of the "gravel Express", it came with "bull bars" and a metal plate just under the front bumper so the car could ride over rocks and loose gravel. Maybe you can add something similar to yours and still have it look cool?

Take the chin spoiler off and keep it pristine to re-install just before you resell the car. Put a chin plate on in it's place - made out of 6061T6 aluminum plate.

why would they want to if they can sell $1k to every idiot that ordered a useless skirting piece of shit

a local car mag just had the stock lower trim (not piece of shit shubaru "performance skirt" you were suckered into buying mind you) evaluated as part of their car comparo exactly on the merits of withstanding contact with the "unusually high curbs"

hailing from the land of inept and indifferent city infrastructure planners

let him keep the chin to reflect his individuality

when i lived in the US I loved the skirting cause that was an automatic signal for me to

1. switch lanes if I'm in front
2. if I'm behind multiply the trailing distance by 1.5

gawd bless the skirting and other boy racing shit: keeps the rest of the drivers alert: stupid shit that could happen any minute now

subaru dealers should sell glue-on goatees next to the wrx cold air intakes

Ordered? It was sitting on the lot, I bought it from stock. Also, I think it is a fact of life for WRX - you buy WRX, U get the air dam now.

Yeah, well, there's also ice dams created by snow plows, dead animals in the road, snow drifts before the plows get there, all sortsa stuff. It snows here, and from now on, I'm driving the Jeep.

Yeah, well, I don't know how to take the spoiler off without it looking totally like crap. That thing goes halfway up the fender and joins there. Taking it off just leaves a big void, and, well, would look like crap.

If someone ever makes something aftermarket that reconfigures the front end in an esthetically pleasing manner, I might buy it instead after the next broken spoiler.

Meanwhile, the nonsense with disabling the cruise control just 'cuz the frikkin' check engine light comes on is reason enough for me to leave Subaru at the next big car purchase. That'll probably be at about 200K miles, which is probably going to come up in about 6 years. Camaro, Mustang, something that "gets it" off the line. Or, maybe a Mitsu Evo if they still make 'em... dunno... Have to check the front air dam on THAT, tho...

The WRX is because its FAST. I don't think anything else would be satisfactory, not wagons and stuff. In the SCCA Road Rallying that I do, all speeds are under the speed limit and conducted on roads open to the public, but... if you are at point X, and the checkpoint is at point X + 200 yards and maybe around a curve, and you are 5/100ths of a minute late, then yeah, FAST and HANDLING both make a big difference. I never used to think so, but after getting rid of the old Mitsu Eclipse and running a Jeep Cherokee for about 4 years and finishing from 2nd to worse-than-that in the annual championship, we, the same team, won the championship the very next year after buying a

2005 WRX. That told me that the car DOES matter, something I would have argued to the contrary before that little serendipitous experiment.

The speed of the vehicle is third. First and foremost is route finding. Doesn't matter how good your vehicle is, if you're going down the wrong road you're toast. Second is timekeeping. Third is the driver and vehicle: to get out of situations where the navigator has put you down the wrong road.I competed in many of these in a 55 VW. Never won but was never down the back of the field. Some of these were 24 hour straight and one was 36. to

4, 3, 2 finish in ONRC back in the early eighties with the lowest powered, butt-ugliest cat in the whole series - Renault R12. Even Civics and VW Beetles had more power.

Got news for you. It's not just Subaru who does that. In fact it is quite common - particularly on AWD vehicles with traction control or stability control. If the engine controls are suspect, cruise is disabled. Only makes sense if you understand how the total system works and interacts.

life of brian I take it

Try and find complaints concerning it on Google. The all came up Subaru...

That's fine, but we're talking SCCA National Tour rally here, which is a different animal. Its my empirical results that say that the car is very important.

Check engine light on all my subs puts them into limp mode. Disables everything. Sounds like u shud look for a STI Forester for all you want to do. Good clarance and more powerful than the wrx.

I'm talking basically the Canadian version of the SCCA Navigational rallye. Yes, the car is VERY important. It needs to be dead-nuts reliable. It does NOT need to be terribly powerful, and pretty doesn't help at all. In 3 years of rallying the old R12 it NEVER broke - never DNF'd and never finished out of the top five. It rallyed virtually every weekend from Easter to Thanksgiving, all across Ontario. It zeroed more checkpoints than any other car in the series

- which was due to my Navigator's attention to detail. It also never left the road - due to it's incredible suspension and good driving.

Damn! it has no air-dam