Will Prodrive be Rebuilding its Subaru Impreza 97?

Prodrive presently competes in cross-country rallies with 400-horsepower off-road prototypes and came second in this year’s Dakar Rally. However, throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the British automobile manufacturer is best known for running the Subaru factory team in the FIA World Rally Championship. Now it appears like Prodrive is poised to offer a tribute to their late-’90s rally victories.

Prodrive teased the release with a cryptic tweet earlier this week. The tweet includes a silhouette created to look like the two-door Subaru Impreza that the group used in the late 1990s. The silhouette’s contour is a unique shade of blue that complements both Prodrive’s existing corporate logo and the Subaru World Rally Cars’ colour scheme. The sole language that accompanied the tweet was, “An icon redefined, here is P25.” with the date of May 25th.

An icon redefined, this is P25.
25/05/22 #p25 #prodrive #iconredefined #comingsoon pic.twitter.com/F1FpN2Z3Up

— Prodrive (@prodrive) May 18, 2022

Colin McRae won five rallies with the team during the 1997 World Rally Championship season, more than any other driver at the time. McRae, the 1995 World Rally Champion, lost the 1997 title to Tommi Mäkinen of Mitsubishi Ralliart by a single point. Subaru, on the other hand, was able to win its third straight manufacturers’ title. It was perhaps the pinnacle of both Prodrive’s and Subaru’s World Rally Championship careers.

While I’m interested to learn more about the P25, I don’t anticipate it to be a carbon copy of the turbocharged EJ20-powered compact that ruled rally stages in the late 1990s. With Prodrive’s recent electrification and hybridization initiatives, it wouldn’t be shocking if the automaker was set to reveal an ultra-low volume high-performance electric or hybrid compact in the spirit of the 1997 Impreza. This anticipated P25 would be a low-volume venture comparable to the Impreza Prodrive P1 from 2000. To be sure, we’ll have to wait until later this week.