Remove buttons, replace with voice controls that require a dozen+ electrical components to be in perfect shape; in order to work half the time.
If only there was a fun, cheap, more reliable option with knobs and buttons. Oh well.
While we're fantasizing, a hand brake and the ability to turn off all nannies would also be nice.
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That was my other car-- BETTER in the snow than just about any other car of it's size. Another fun as hell car. BUT-- unlike the VW Golf R, the car comes with just too much cheap, shitty crap that needs to be replaced (or modified) for it to be at the level of the Golf.
Cheap as shit interior. Plastics that break and snap for no reason at all. Interior lighting that is dim and yellow. A radio and electronics that are so crappy that you need to replace them (unlike the VW that is just too technologically advanced for its own good).
However-- if you are willing to put $$ into the car, it becomes what the R already is. I upgraded the fuel injectors, the lighting, had an invidia up pipe and down pipe (the down pipe-- the single best mod for the money for the WRX), a full hand-made MadDad exhaust, an ECS performance tune, a short shifter, an after market radio and THEN the car was fun as shit. Stock it is okay, but nothing at all like the car it became. It makes no sense to me to this day to leave all the potential of the WRX for the end-user to tap into. It would be like buying a the best gaming computer in the world with a shit processor and an old TV as a monitor with no controllers... Maybe that is a bad example.
The WRX became a monster but it cost a ton to do it. Even the somewhat "sloshy" stock clutch on the Golf R has an elegance to it that Subaru stock clutches just don't have. I can get a short shifter for the Golf R. There are a lot of options, but even though VW probably hasn't changed the cable-linkage clutch mechanism of their cars in two or three decades, they don't really have to because (even with the long throws), the shifting is precise and exact. If you want to replace a working, fully functional longer throw with a short, notchy mechanism like an APR short shifter or the "Holy Shift" you can, but that's a matter of personal preference rather than required performance.
Subaru (and I LOVE them for an all season car-- I have owned THREE of them) does not really have an "upper eschalon" level of car, and don't try the STI argument because it doesn't hold water. They are all like trailer homes-- you can make them nice but you have to work hard at it to do so (and you'll still never have a mansion). The best and sloset thing I had in a Subaru to a "luxury" car was a v6 Outback.
