Associate Editor Byron Hurd introduced you to the official Subaru performance accessories which we have on our 2023 Subaru WRX. And of those, the one I was most looking forward to and expected to change the experience the most was the STI damper. Because as fun and snappy as the WRX is, the one thing I felt it needed more than anything else was some growl. Or growl. Or bark. It was just a little too quiet for its lively paint and massive hood scoop. So what did I think when I first picked up the WRX from Byron, post-surgery?
“Oh no, I think we ruined our WRX.”
Yeah, first impressions, with barely any miles on the exhaust, weren’t great. The WRX has a relatively high-rev cold-start routine, and it eventually brings out the worst in the muffler. It’s extremely boomy from the cabin, especially in that 1,000-2,000 rpm range where cold starts are. So your morning quiet is interrupted by a resonant hum throughout the car. And the booming never really goes away. It crops up at other points in the rev band, and especially when you roll off the throttle.
There is some good news on this front though. After a few hundred kilometres the overall volume dropped a bit, apparently after the muffler had ‘broken in’. It never went away, but it did get milder.
More good news, this muffler has some real positives. Apart from the occasional thump, the exhaust note is reasonably clean and deep. And once it settles into a warm idle, it’s a bit bumpy, as you’d expect from a boxer engine. The extra volume is also welcome for adjusting the revs, as Road Test Editor Zac Palmer noted, and is generally fun when you’re riding hard.
There are two other important things this muffler does. First, it’s pretty civilized on the highway. That boomy start worried Hurd and I, but we discovered that it’s tuned just right to be quiet (just a tad louder than stock) and not too noisy at highway cruising speeds (60-80 mph). So you don’t go deaf after hours on the highway. Second, it’s strangely quiet from the outside. We don’t know how, but the exhaust almost sounds louder inside the car outside. You can feel like a hooligan while driving, but without incurring the wrath of your neighbors.
Oh, and the points are sharp. The trapezoidal points are unique and have sharp stampings, especially the STI logos.
So yeah, ultimately the silencer is a bit of a mixed bag. It gets pretty noisy inside, annoying at times, but in some critical areas it’s still liveable. So we really can’t recommend racing it and buying it, nor can we say you should stay away from it. It’s worth mentioning that Subaru makes no claims about horsepower gains, which makes sense since it’s just the resonator and tips, no other exhaust components, and it doesn’t come with a revised engine tune. And $1,139.95 is a fair amount of money, even if it doesn’t invalidate you warranty. Weigh our pros and cons against your priorities, listen to the video example, and make your decision based on that.