Words: Gentleman's Journal
Petrol heads have spent all summer gearing up for the release of Baby Driver, which is predicted to be one of the biggest films of the year. If the trailers are anything to go by, Edgar Wright’s latest film starring Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, Kevin Spacey and Ansel Elgort is packed with gun, action and automobiles, in short: the perfect film for men.
But arguably, the actual star of the film isn’t Gentleman’s Journal cover star, Ansel Elgort, but instead the car he uses to flee his heists, the legendary Subaru Impreza WRX STI.
While speaking with the Gentleman’s Journal for his cover shoot in the July/August issue of the magazine, Ansel Elgort revealed that Sony allowed him to keep one of the Subaru Impreza vehicles used to film the stunts.
The Subaru WRX has been around since the early 1990’s but the version used in the film is a stock 2006 STI. It is a car that found popularity thanks to a rivalry with Mitsubishi on the World Rally Championship tracks.
Today the 2014 WRX STI has a 6,000rpm engine capable of reaching 62mph in just 5.2 seconds. It has a top speed of 159mph and costs £31,995.
Although it has always been a firm favourite among racing fans, the Subaru has secured its status as one of the legendary cars of all time after tearing up the set of Baby Driver.
Even Ansel Elgort fell for the car. As the young leading man explains to Vanity Fair, thanks to his starring role behind the wheel in Baby Driver, he caught the bug for driving and drifting. He underwent an intensive course learning from one of the highest rated stunt drivers in Hollywood, Jeremy Fry, who has worked on films such as Bourne and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Soon Elgort was able to J-turn and power slide with the best of them. In fact, Elgort became such a petrol head that he began to beg Sony Pictures to let him take the all important Subaru home with him after the film wrapped.
‘I just harassed Sony and asked once a week,’ he said, ‘I know you have like six of them. Let me have one. Let me have one. I’ll pay for it. I’ll this, I’ll that. Eventually, they finally said fine, you can have one. We wrapped the film last May. I finally got it in March. They gave it to me for my birthday.’
To own your slice of film history, buy the latest version of the Subaru Impreza WRX STI used in Baby Driver here
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