We don’t get much snow in the Washington, D.C. metro area anymore. Maybe we never have, really. Our last “huge” snowfall was nearly a decade ago, with a smaller storm passing through two years back. This week, though, we were graced with Legit Snowfall and I had just the car – a 2025 Subaru WRX tS. Subaru normally sells the WRX tS with Bridgestone summer tires, and given they threw the car into our press fleet in December, they had replaced those Bridgestones with a set of Michelin Pilot Alpin winter tires. A Subaru on snows for a storm… hell yes.
In college, my friend David owned a first-year 2002 Subaru WRX. It was grumbly (as all boxers are), unrefined and very, I dunno, Subaru-y. You wouldn’t call it luxurious in the slightest, but every time we got snow in college, we’d go do dumb things in parking lots in that WRX. And it shrugged the whole thing off.
Subaru’s Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive plays a big part in that, and the system hasn’t changed much since David’s WRX was built twenty-three years ago. Wow, I’m old. On manual-transmission cars, Symmetrical AWD employs a permanent 50/50 split of power front and rear. Differentials on each axle are open, the only real downfall. It’s a simple setup, whereas STis of years past offered driver-selectable control of the power bias.
The WRX tS is ‘Tuned by STi”
Oh, right. What even is the Subaru WRX tS? New for 2025, it’s now the best version of the WRX, a mix of parts from the TR and GT trims. Think of it as a WRX that STi fiddled with in every way except for power. Yes, that means it makes the same 271 horsepower and 258 lb-ft of torque as every other WRX. Buyers are spared from a CVT – sorry, the ‘Subaru Performance Transmission’ – as a six-speed manual is the only gearbox available.
From the WRX TR, Subaru took the Brembo brakes, throwing six-piston calipers on the front and two-piston calipers out back. They’re gold here, not the TR’s red, but functionally the same. Off the GT come the adaptive dampers, though with stiffer tuning in every drive mode.
Inside, the interior is Very Blue, with accents on the door panels, center armrest and (fabulous) Recaro buckets. It features a newly-offered digital gauge cluster to compliment the large, somewhat-laggy Starlink infotainment screen. Pink tS accents abound, as does a red STi start button and red STi logo in the virtual gauge cluster.
I liked the steering a bit more on this one compared to the 2022 WRX I sampled several years ago. But otherwise, it’s a Subaru WRX, which is a car that has really never, I dunno, endeared itself to me.
My Snowpinion of the WRX is Different
You are either a Subaru person or you are not. I have realized that while I find their cars to be incredibly competent and generally well-packaged, they aren’t the most endearing. I’ll drive one and enjoy it enough, but I don’t look back at it once I’ve parked.
Well, this snow storm came through and changed all that. Y’all, this thing rules.
Much of this love letter I’m writing is ultimately about using snow tires in snow instead of a lesser all-season. Tires impact a car’s grip – obviously – but also its turn-in feel from the steering and its acceleration and braking performance. And that says nothing of the ride quality and cabin noise. This was my first time really driving on snows, and they very quickly proved their worth, on top of Subaru’s all-wheel drive.
Various news (Instagram) I consumed indicated we got roughly six or seven inches of snow inside the DC Beltway’s boundaries. That’s a lot for our area, and it took crews a while to clear it out. I woke up early on Monday, as the snow was actively falling, and went Subaruing. Later that evening, with more snow still coming down, I went back out.
As I slithered my way through Northwest D.C., I didn’t encounter many other cars, but the ones I did come across were all being driven incredibly slowly. My frustration built quickly. “Just go!” I kept screaming in my head. Well, they couldn’t, because they didn’t have the grip from their whatever-brand of all-season tire and were being appropriately cautious as a result. “Oh,” I realized, “I’m driving this car like it’s dry out. Neat.”
I later embraced The Chicks and found some Wide Open Spaces to continue my play time. With traction control disabled, the WRX tS was even more of a blast. Leaving stoplights? Two thousand RPM and careful clutch work had me absolutely scooting off the line. The engine can run out of steam toward the top of the tachometer, but in the snow you only need 3,500 RPM or so anyway.
Letting the wheels spin more freely before traction control (not fully disabled, it turns out) intervened made things fun. The car felt rear-biased, easily giving me some tail-out action if I dipped my toe into the throttle leaving a turn. And yet it was easy to bring back, with either a dab of counter-steer or a slight lift of the pedal. It was balanced, predictable, and allowed for plenty of silly “whee!” moments at seven miles per hour.
Driving down 14th Street past the National Mall, everyone else was in the one well-plowed lane of traffic. I took the unplowed lane and kept my foot in it. The WRX tS could not find a single care in the world, scrabbling its way forward in second gear. Other drivers looked at me as if I was insane. I was just… driving the car. If I had the ground clearance, I had full faith in the WRX and its snow tires to keep moving.
I Looked Back at This One
The night of the storm, I went to a friend’s place for dinner. As the week has progressed, our streets have improved, though they’re still pretty slushy and gross. Many cars are still struggling in places. I kept driving the WRX tS until they came and took it home yesterday morning. And every single time I parked, I looked back at it.
I think a lot of cars look good dirty – it shows that they’ve been up to some adventure. The 2025 Subaru WRX tS, in particular, looks best absolutely filthy. The black fender cladding, silly as it looks in the dry, looks absolutely proper covered in salt spray. Even the white paint is more fitting when it’s covered in a thin layer of snowy road grime. Seeing frozen snow packed in to the wheel wells every time I parked made me so happy.
Despite the bulk of my impressions actually being about tires, the WRX tS endeared itself otherwise. Playing on slippy surfaces allows the car’s true character to shine. Twenty-three years after David’s WRX was built, this one is still kind of grumbly, kind of unrefined, very sure-footed, and generally well-packaged. It’s grown up, but it’s still got the same spirit, a spirit that I guess is there all the time but really, truly comes out when you can get properly silly on a low-traction surface.
This whole experience was a great warm-up for even more snow driving. In a few weeks, I’ll be headed to Steamboat Springs, Colorado to attend the Bridgestone Winter Driving School with fellow automotive media. We’ll have instructors coaching us through all sorts of high-performance and practical winter driving scenarios, once again on a proper snow tire. I can’t wait.
