[WRC] News & Rumours 2018

[GravelBen]

Subaru makes a 1.6 but not an inline engine. Plus there's the weight distribution issue that always gets mentioned (though not by Audi fans). And why would Toyota want a competitor when they own a portion of Subaru?

The weight distribution is probably the biggest issue that would prevent them being competitive (and they won't enter if they don't expect to be competitive).

A transverse engine can take advantage of the rules to be moved from its production positionfor better weight distribution and c.o.m in a way that can't be done with the longitudinal boxer layout. IIRC (hopefully someone with more knowledge can confirm or correct me) WRC rules say the crankshaft has to stay in the same position but the rest of the engine can be rotated around that - so a transverse inline engine can be more or less lying down behind the the crank in a place that would never be practical for a production car, but if you rotate a boxer engine around its crank you just end up with a vertical boxer instead of horizontal.

So unless they revise those rules to be fairer for different engine layouts (or Subaru make a new small hatch which isn't a boxer engine) I don't think we'll see Subaru come back.

ETA: Thinking about it some more, if they are developing a new small hatch as rumoured then it might not be a boxer anyway due to packaging for that size of car. Still not counting any chickens at this stage though...