In production since 2014, the Levorg isn’t sold in the United States because Subaru can’t make a case for a sports wagon in a crossover-loving market. That’s a bit curious if you remember that Audi has the RS 6 Avant, but we’re talking very different price points and performance levels.
Over in Japan and Europe, however, the Levorg prepares to roll out the second generation of the breed in the second half of 2020 for the 2021 model year. It’s an all-new design from the ground up, based on the Subaru Global Platform of the Impreza, Crosstrek (a.k.a XV) and many more.
Revealed in October 2019 at the Tokyo Motor Show, the Levorg Gen 2 will be available under the STI Sport nomenclature as well. The go-faster family longroof will be revealed in the flesh in January 2020 at the Tokyo Auto Salon as a pre-production prototype that the Japanese automaker describes in pompous words: “a symbol of Subaru’s driving performance future.”
Joined by the BRZ STI Sport and WRX S4 STI Sport concepts, the Levorg STI Sport will also share the exhibition area with no fewer than three racing cars. In no particular order, these are the BRZ GT300, WRX STI NBR Challenge, and WRX STI rally car for the Japanese Rally Championship.
The Sport in Sport STI has a similar meaning to M340i xDrive versus M3 for BMW. Subaru might not have tapped into the full potential of the sports wagon, yet there’s no denying the engine has almost 300 ponies on deck.
When the Levorg was revealed two months ago, Subaru made a point with the introduction of an all-new turbo boxer with 1.8 liters of displacement. No other particularities are known about the powerplant, but in the case of the STI Sport, the Levorg will feature 2.0 liters of displacement. The FA20 engine is the most likely culprit, pumping out 296 PS (292 horsepower) and 400 Nm (295 pound-feet) of torque in the Levorg STI Sport from May 2019.
This engine has been proven in applications such as the Legacy, Forester, and WRX as well, including the U.S. version of the WRX sedan. The FA24 is an evolution of this architecture, introduced in 2018 in the Ascent three-row crossover in a toned-down specification: 260 horsepower and 277 twerks.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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