Blue Meanies Over Bitburg; The Subaru Prodrive rally car and one quick Finn at the wheel.(News)(Product/Service Evaluation)

Byline: Matt Davis

A clean-cut New Age grease monkey-call him Mork-crouches down by the driver's door, laptop in hand. The driver, Finnish WRC overlord Tommi Makinen, through hand gestures and good English, describes what the brake setup is like, and how he'd like it back the way he generally prefers. They're biting too hard and he needs something more progressive. Before Makinen is even done describing the sensation, Mork, who has plugged the laptop into the car's ECU and has been staring with caffeinated eyes at the screen, cuts the legend off with, ``Okay, Tommi, the brakes are back the way you like.'' And off we go.

Each Subaru WRC car built and programmed by Prodrive comes to Banbury in the British Midlands from Japan as a plain-wrapper Impreza WRX STi. It's stripped to its shell and all suspension points and mounting bushings are lopped off. Panels get replaced with S514 steel sheeting, EN14 steel is used for extra muscle at the suspension pick-up points, and a complete roll cage of T45 high-carbon steel tubing is welded in, back to front. Weight of the new shell comes in at 595 pounds, which is lighter than where it started, while body flex descends to about zero.

Enhancing the near non-tip-over-ability of the Subaru rally car is the placement of everything as low to the floor as possible. This includes the co-driver, whose shoes we're filling today, at least in body. So, once we've slipped into an electric-blue and yellow fire suit, assumed the position in the carbon fiber dentist's chair and had our helmet hooked up to establish voice contact with the reticent Finn, we feel like low ballast. Or we would, except that almost all monitoring equipment on the car is the co-driver's responsibility. Everything but the steering wheel seems angled our way and we're also surrounded by the safety equipment and emergency tools.

The effort to hunker everything but the driver down is to keep the center of gravity low. The literal flip side of this is that when something so grievous happens along as to cause the car to tip, boy, can it tip. And tip. And tip. Witness Makinen and his co-driver Kaj Lindstrom's eight-and-a-half barrel rolls on a Sunday stage in Argentina this past June. But such critical encounters are rare in WRC and particularly so for the low and flat traction-happy Subarus. These cars can melt the cones on a slalom course. Leave tire ruts at the skidpad.

Putting all the hotter Imprezas in perspective, the low end would be the WRX at 227 horsepower followed by the soon-to-arrive-here WRX STi at 261 horsepower (see sidebar). After these two sturdy club racers come the pros: the WRC Impreza, limited to 300 horses, and our nation's own SCCA Pro Rally Open Class car that's let loose to 380 horses. This latter is an interesting note. Almost all WRC drivers wish their cars would be allowed the power of our Open Class versions, and all Subaru pilots say the car drives better with more ...