22B OR NOT 22B?

That is the question to be asked of the Prodrive P25, which seeks to modernise and enhance one of the 1990s finest performance cars. Steve Cropley seeks an answer

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A single loud report from a big-bore titanium exhaust announced the Prodrive P25's arrival. We had started hearing the growl of an approaching car a little earlier, definitely something with a decent helping of horsepower, but perhaps, we thought, it was some other potent machine, just passing by. However, properly bred rally cars generally produce a characteristic crack, when the engine ignition is cut to facilitate their near-instant gearchanges, and that sound was unmistakable.

Within a minute, front and centre, its exhaust ticking from the heat, stood the final prototype of the P25, a restomod of Subaru's ultra-rare 1997 Impreza 22B STi. It had been driven on shakedown by Prodrive's founder and chairman, David Richards, who will soon start delivering cars to customers in earnest. We had arranged to meet for lunch at a welcoming Cotswolds pub called The Fox at Oddington and then take the P25 for a shakedown drive of our own.

About 18 months ago, Banbury-based Prodrive came up with a plan to reprise and progress the 22B, itself a commemorative model unveiled at the 1997 Tokyo motor show to mark the 40th anniversary of Subaru and it winning three consecutive World Rally Championship manufacturers' titles. Only 424 road cars were ever made- of which 400 were for Japan and just 16 for the UK. It's a matter of legend that it sold out overnight.

When these 22Bs started breaking through the £200,000 auction price barrier, Richards decided to build a new run of 25 "reimagined" road cars, using authentic chassis sourced from UK-imported Impreza WRX models.