Rental Car Ruckus 2: Electric Boogaloo

[WRXtranceformed]

So I won the rental car lottery on my week long west coast work trip. I show up in Spokane late and they're mostly sold out. The girl tells me I can have a Jeep Compass, a truck, or a Camaro. You know which one your boy chose. What surprised me was that it was the SS trim when I walked outside:




What I liked:
1. Having a car like that to drive through the rolling hills of the Palouse
2. The engine and transmission - these modern muscle cars definitely have the power level dialed in. In Sport and Track mode, I really didn't experience much of the crappy GM TCU programming. It shifted quick and well. And 8 speeds with an engine with that much power? My Lord when you slam the go pedal you never lose torque
3. The handling through turns - I can see why this platform did well at the Nurburging. It feels super planted through high speed turns and really wants to turn in. I give it high praise here even with my rental example having obvious alignment issues (the steering wheel was permanently tilted about 8*)
4. The sound - Remote starting this thing every morning made me laugh. My CEO told me my boss needed to check my expense reports (jokingly, he's a car guy). I was getting what I think was getting some weird backfire vibration on hard downshifts but no cool burbles, I got spoiled from the Jag. That's my only gripe is moar backfire

What I didn't like:
1. Visiblity - It's borderline dangerous. You've got like maybe 6 vertical inches out of the back window, really no visibility into your blind spots, super tiny mirrors and a windshield that I think really could be extended up much higher. If you are first or second at a stoplight, you can't see whether it changed or not without leaning past the steering wheel. To actually own this car in a not-rural area, you would IMO have to either get a package that gives you blind spot monitoring or buy the convertible and keep the top down as much as possible
2. The interior is pretty weirdly laid out. The touch screen actually angles down and away from the driver which is really weird and pointless to me. Seats are just OK. The sound system sounded like there was only one speaker and it was behind the touch screen.
3. SUPER dusty brakes. I noticed it just from a few days of driving
4. While the handling is very good, the car does not feel stable or safe on uneven pavement or when hit with minor road bumps. Which leads to:
5. Overall it's pretty unrefined, which would probably be my argument for most American muscle cars. I think if you've never driven a high horsepower German or British coupe/sedan and jumped into one of these, you'd probably think it was fast AF (which it is) and the best performance car on the road. But when you've experienced a world class suspension and complete drivetrain package that comes along with cars in the next tier price point, you really understand why there's such a big price gap. In other words, this is the type of car that I would not want to drive across country in, through all manner of road quality and weather. I would have done it in the XFR in a heartbeat.

Speaking of which, some random guy in Charlotte messaged me on Facebook and said he bought my old XFR from the guy I sold it to down in Greenville. He found my name from the service records. He said it was well cared for and still running like a champion, I told him I'd give him a thumbs up if I see him around town.

The SS was fun for a week though and it made that trip across WA / ID a lot more enjoyable