Have you heard of the europe and japanese-only Subaru Impreza WRX models? You know, the ones with turbos, sport suspensions, and out of this world body kits, and the basis of Subaru's multiple world championship rally cars? Well think of the 2.5RS a WRX without the turbo, which it pretty much is.

The Y2K edition is the final year of the first generation Subaru Impreza, with a new one arriving mid 2001 with- praie the lord! a Turbo WRX model coming to the United states! But that's the future, not now. For the next couple of months, you cna walk in to your Subaru dealer and buy a brand new Impreza 2.5RS sport compact, which is a gem of a little car.

The car in question comes with a 2.5 litre high displacent "boxer" 4 cylender engine and special AWD. The motor features ground shaking torque for an engine of its size and plenty of passing power. It feels liek it can out-accelerate a Honda Civic Si. The All-Wheel-Drive system is standard and offers maximum grip at all times, whether you are demanding curve-carving pavement grip, or you feel like Colin McRae, the famous subaru/ford rally drive and taking it off road a bit.

The standard 5-speed manual transmission is the tranny of choice for it's smooth shifts and controllability, whle the 4 speed auto is slow-whitted and expensive. The exhaust note of the the RS is a fierce, sort of growling tone that sounds liek a tuner muffler right off the show room floor.

The interior is roomy enough and can fit 2 adaults in front comfortably and 2 teens or kids in back with comfort, but it shouldn't be an adault's place to sit.This would make a fine first car for a kid or an excellent singles lifestyle autmobile. Oh yeah, did I mention it looks "dope"?