Frankly, there's always pride in your specific vehicle, but a lot of the WRX/STI owners who make those comments have never driven an Evo. You'll see more people going from WRXs/STIs to Evos than the other way around. For example, in my area (Orange County, CA), there is a Mitsubishi dealership basically across the street from a Subaru dealership, and the Mitsubishi dealership is filled with pre-owned Subarus, most likely from trade-ins, while I can't say the same about Subaru.

But if they haven't driven an Evo, then their opinions do make sense -- it is still a great car that can perform better than most other cars on the road as well. I remember Edmunds did a comparison between the STI and a Mustang Bullitt, and the STI won every single performance category and most others as well (outside of looks and sound).

 

yeah. lol. matter of fact, the subaru right across it doesn't have any evo or lancers on the lot while south coast mitsu has a whole bunch of wrx/sti displayed at the front, with a few almost new 2011 models.

 

From being on the Subaru forums (NASIOC), there seems to be more subarus in the Northwest area and Colorado. I'm sure more in the northern areas AWD are prominant but for some reason, subarus are popular in those two areas.

 

That's partially because of the benefits (or necessity, if you want to look at it that way) of having AWD in those areas since they have terrain that would benefit the added traction. It's not just winter conditions that call for them but also dirt/gravel roads. So in those regions, a company like Subaru that targets this demographic through an all-AWD lineup will be a more reputable brand since their cars are fit for those changing conditions throughout the course of a year.

In other places, say here in California, there's generally not much of a need for AWD, let alone an entire AWD lineup, outside of specific areas like Mammoth. It had generally just been another small company that never really got much attention here in the U.S. until we got the WRX in 2002, which allowed it to grow more popular outside of the regions that truly did benefit from AWD vehicles.

 

I'm in the process of returning my WRX to stock and also moving to the darkside lol.