The Impreza’s ride is very comfortable, especially for a car in the sub-20 grand class. In our daily commute, it was a relaxed partner. On twisty roads however, the suspension gets discombobulated. On one hand there’s a surprising amount of grip, and because of the all-wheel drive you can carry quite a bit of speed to a corner. But the soft springs mean lots of body roll, and the lack of power means that carrying the speed out of the corner doesn’t really happen. It’s kind of fun in a drive-a-slow-car-fast sort of way, but any tossability the Impreza once had has been, well, tossed.

The handling is partly there, but the lack of power (or presence of weight) hinders what you can do with the car. Shorter gearing would help, as would a stiffer suspension. Of course, if you’re looking for all that, you might just want to step up to the more powerful and stiffly sprung WRX. Unfortunately, you’ll have to shell out an additional seven grand to get there, and there is currently no stiffly sprung naturally aspirated model available, and nobody at Subaru is mentioning a 2.5 RS version any time soon.

The front seats in the Impreza 2.5i are very good. Although all the adjustments are manual, there are plenty of them, including a ratcheting seat height adjustment. The cloth isn’t particularly expensive feeling, but it imparts a sense of durability, and it’s certainly comfortable. The shift handle and steering wheel in our test car were both bare urethane, and while they’re fine when new, we wonder if they’ll get slippery with age. Also, the door tops and center console armrest are both hard plastic; the only soft spot for your elbow is the small, narrow door-mounted armrest.

Tall people will find the rear seat of the Impreza 2.5i cramped, but if you’re under 5 feet 8 inches tall it should be adequate. There is good head room, and shoulder room is fine for two people; three would push the limits of personal space. There is no center arm rest at all, and the door tops are hard plastic here, as they are in front.

Inexpensive cars are often noisy, but this Subie bucks that trend with an interior mostly free of annoying noises. At speed there is some wind noise around the mirrors, and there is enough road noise filtering through the car to let you know you’re under way, but neither is particularly bad. The main source of noise is the engine. Under hard acceleration the engine gets thrashy, as flat-fours tend to, and you catch a hint of that distinctive Subaru engine note as well. If you’re a fan of these cars you’ll love it, otherwise it just sounds a little odd.

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