Well tomarrow I'm going to go and see about test driving an Evo, and possibly an STi if any of the Subbie dealers will have it (they better, I won't buy a car w/o test driving it). One minor problem: I have only driven a stick once, when I test drove an 04 WRX (non-sti). It was great fun, but I don't know what I feel comfortable test driving an Evo/STi stick, it's alot of machine, and they are expensive cars, plus I don't want to hurt the clutch any.

Should I have the salesman drive it for me? I mean, I need to get a feel for the car but how can I do that w/o being able to drive a stick? I know the general idea, clutch in, shift, ease out clutch, gas, and I did okay on the test drive, but it wasn't very smooth.

Ideas?

 

You can ask the salesman to drive it for you if you'd like. You will at least get some feel for the suspension and ride. Ultimately, you need to drive it yourself. The Evo is very easy to drive for a manual car: there's so much torque, it's almost impossible to stall. Also, the clutch and shifter are very light and precise, so it's not as challenging as you might expect. Can you bring a stick-driving friend with you? That might be better than just letting the salesman drive you around.

Oh, and don't feel bad that you're "beating up" on the tester. You should see how these cars are abused by customers and especially by the dealers themselves (dropped clutches, clumsy shifts, no cool-down, etc.). The testers are totally junked anyway, so you're not going to hurt one any just by tooling around for a few minutes.

Funny story: When my dad bought his new Subaru Forester 2.5 XT, they had to send one of their salesman to their other location to pick up some options that my dad ordered. The salesman took the STi tester. He revved the **** out of the thing, dropped the clutch and took off. He was back in a few minutes (so he obviously drove like hell...the other location was a few miles away). He just pulled up in front of the door, switched the car off, and hopped out. No warm up, no cool down, dropped clutches, etc. by a guy who doesn't know a thing about cars (you should have heard his ridiculous sales pitch for the STi). Like I said...the dealers beat up on the testers far worse than you ever could on a 10 minute test drive so don't feel bad. Just remember to never buy an Evo or STi that was a "demo" car.

Emre

 

Unless the one you test drive is the one you want to buy, familiarize yourself with manual transmission first before you go test driving an evo or sti. 1st off, they're powerful cars....kinda unsafe if you're not comfortable driving stick....2nd of all, if you do mess up the car, the dealer will just put that car right back on the shelf and I'm sure you wouldn't want to be the one to buy that either right?

 

you can always ask to drive a stick ralliart lancer first (so you can do a crash course in stick)

 

you should be buying an automatic camry

 

Just wait for the GT-A version ....

 

Well I just got back from the dealer. They had about 6 Evos, unfortunately here in NY the roads are a bit wet/slushy, so they wouldn't let any test drives, even by salesman. I guess I'll have to go back in the spring.