For obvious reasons, we give a lot of credit to a fun manual-transmission car to the shifter itself. But shifting has other steps involved, making it a more complicated dance. Miss some of those steps, and you'll be tripping over yourself. Fortunately, our long-term 2023 Subaru WRX nails the other details to keep it dancing all day and night.
One of the big missteps of modern manual machines is rev-hang. Presumably a result of trying to keep emissions down, lots of manual cars, particularly turbocharged ones, stubbornly cling to whatever rpm level was reached upon pressing the clutch pedal. This can make for some awkward upshifts when you really want the revs to drop for the next gear. The problem is also frequently accompanied by relatively slow revving. As such, it makes it hard to bring the revs up for a quick and smooth downshift. The Subaru dodges both of these issues. The engine feels quite free-revving both up and down on shifts. Not only does it make it smoother on gear changes, it lends a more playful feeling overall to the engine and the car.
Pedals are another tricky thing. The most common fault is a set of pedals spaced very far apart, such that doing heel-and-toe downshifting (in which you press the brake with your right foot while blipping the throttle to rev-match with either your heel or the right side of the same foot) is very difficult. Again, the WRX gets the pedals just right. They're close enough that it's a breeze to bridge your foot across the brake and gas, and the brake pedal is high enough that with pressure, it ends up lined up nicely with the throttle.
These features are further appreciated because, in the WRX's rather old-school nature, there's no auto rev-matching feature like several of its competitors have. And while it would still be nice to see a feature like that included, since it is mighty effective and makes it easier for manual rookies to learn, we'll take its strong engine and pedal fundamentals over a bit of fancy technology everyday. Good job, Subaru.
