What’s Going on With the Subaru in the Twisted Metal Trailer?

Today, the first trailer for Peacock’s new Twisted Metal series dropped. It’s a streaming-only TV show, based on a video game, because those are hot right now and people seem to like making them. Sometimes they’re even good!

I don’t know if Twisted Metal looks good or not, because I’ve never played the game. But I do know the trailer heavily features a bugeye Subaru, and boy do I have some thoughts on that. Specifically, one thought: What is happening with this car?

In case you missed it:

This is probably the best-lit shot of the whole car, and we can see a few things. It’s an orange bugeye with a vented hood, it has some tacked-on fender flares, and it’s wearing an STi wing. That little tidbit started me thinking — we didn’t get a bugeye STi in the U.S., so is this a WRX in cosplay?

Maybe. There’s no hood scoop, which normally disqualifies a Subie from WRX-dom, but this is the rare occasion where that may actually not be the case. Most enthusiasts know that a WRX’s hood scoop is meant to funnel air into a top-mounted intercooler, but only the Subie faithful generally know its second purpose: pulling hot air out, away from the turbo. This vented hood can’t do the former, but it might be able to pull off the latter. Meaning, if the top-mount intercooler has been swapped for a front-mount, we may be looking at a factory turbo car here.

Conveniently, the show gives us a shot of the car’s front. Inconveniently, it’s incredibly dark, because that’s just how movies and TV are now. Blowing the image out in Photoshop and increasing the brightness doesn’t help either — there’s just no information behind that front bumper to reveal. If only there was some other way for us to tell, something to differentiate a modified Impreza from a true WRX.

Oh, that’s convenient. A shot of the pedals, showing real, metal, WRX foot pads! The Impreza, back in 2003, just got plain black rubber. Sure, these could be transferred over, but why would you? If you’re busy outfitting your Subie with fender-mounted machine guns, pedal feel is probably the last thing on your mind.

So, the car in Twisted Metal does appear to be a true WRX. That’s a hell of a mystery that no one thought was a mystery, and didn’t even really need solving, but damn if it didn’t just get solved. Hopefully that means a show full of boxer rumble, of turbo flutter, and a perfectly real-world accurate midseason episode where Anthony Mackie’s cylinder 4 ringlands go bad and he needs to swap in a junker motor because the piston slap ruined the cylinder walls. If this show includes that, it’ll get full marks from me.