Volkswagen Golf GTI vs Subaru WRX

The eighth-generation Volkswagen Golf GTI was introduced for the 2022 model year and enters 2024 essentially unchanged. The main news is that 2024 marks the last year a manual transmission will be available in this classic hot hatchback. Volkswagen is making a 380 special edition package standard on all stick-shift GTIs to commemorate that. A more substantial update is expected for the 2025 model year.

Verdict: The GTI is a great all-rounder held back by poor interior design choices and a staid personality.

Subaru's image is centred around rugged station wagons, outdoor activities, and cute dogs, but the automaker also has a sporty side—exemplified by the 2023 Subaru WRX.

The WRX first appeared in the 1990s as a homologation special for the World Rally Championship (WRC), which at the time required cars to be closely related to production models. Subaru viewed rallying as the perfect way to show off its all-wheel drive (AWD) vehicles so, after a trial with the Legacy midsize sedan, it launched the Impreza-based WRX with the goal of becoming more competitive. It worked: Subaru has won multiple rally championships and the WRX has endeared it to car enthusiasts.

Subaru didn't begin selling the WRX in North America until the 2002 model year, but it's remained a fixture of the automaker's lineup ever since, competing against other sporty compact cars like the Honda Civic Si, Hyundai Elantra N, Volkswagen Golf GTI and Jetta GLI, and other derivatives of those models.

The current, fourth-generation WRX was introduced for the 2022 model year, so there are no changes to report for 2023. The lineup in Canada includes base, Sport, and Sport-Tech trims. For this review, we drove the U.S. WRX GT trim, which is closest to Canada’s top Sport-Tech grade.