Sub­aru deal­ers across the coun­try are now tak­ing orders for a nat­u­rally aspi­rated 4-​​door Impreza.

The AWD sedan comes a year after the new hatch­back Impreza that debuted, and shares the same 2620mm wheel­base and price range for all three vari­ants; R, RX, and RS. How­ever the sedan is 165mm longer than the hatch in total, and comes with a slightly larger boot (45mm longer). The car also rides 35mm higher than the pre­vi­ous Impreza sedan, and pro­vides a split-​​folding rear seat to improve capacity.

The sedan’s engine remains unchanged from the hatch vari­ant, a 110KW(@6400RPM)/196NM(@3200RPM) two litre DOHC Boxer four cylin­der petrol engine mated to either a 5 speed man­ual trans­mis­sion or 4 speed SportsShift auto­matic. Sub­aru claims a com­bined fuel econ­omy of 8.9L/100km for the man­ual vari­ants and 8.8L/100km for auto­matic vari­ants on stan­dard (91RON) unleaded fuel.

The Impreza is avail­able with dual front and side airbags, cur­tain airbags, ABS with elec­tronic brake-​​force dis­tri­b­u­tion (EBD), brake assist, VDC sta­bil­ity con­trol, active front head-​​rests, hill-​​start assist for man­ual cars, air con­di­tion­ing and a stan­dard 4 speaker CD audio. All mod­els are 5-​​star ANCAP rated.

Pur­chas­ing the RX ver­sion adds 16″ alloy wheels, a 6-​​stacker, 10 speaker CD audio sys­tem, auto­matic cli­mate con­trol, a leather-​​rim steer­ing wheel with audio con­trols and leather gearshift and optional sunroof.

The RS upgrades the alloys to 17″, adds a bodykit with rear dif­fuser and spoiler, mesh grille, sports seats, rear pri­vacy glass and an upgraded trim. The RS may also be optioned with a leather trim and sun­roof package.

The WRX ver­sion of the Sedan, pack­ing Subaru’s fabled 169KW/​320NM 2.5L tur­bocharged 4-​​cylinder is expected in December.

Pric­ing is as follows:

• Impreza R $24,490 (man­ual) $26,490 (auto)
• Impreza RX $26,490 (man­ual) $28,490 (auto)
• Impreza RS $29,490 (man­ual) $31,490 (auto)

Just in time for Christ­mas, Honda’s dropped the all new, 5th gen­er­a­tion Inspire.

The new Inspire fea­tures styling cues seen on the new USDM Accord, and a V6 3.5-liter i-​​VTEC engine fea­tur­ing a Vari­able Cylin­der Man­age­ment (VCM) sys­tem. The VCM enables cylin­der switch­ing (based on dri­ving con­di­tions) between 6, 4 and 3 cylinders.

The V6 pro­duces 206kW (280PS) of power and 342N�m (34.9kg�m) of torque while main­tain­ing emis­sion lev­els 75% below 2005 Japan­ese gov­ern­ment standards.

Other fea­tures include

• Col­li­sion Mit­i­ga­tion Brake Sys­tem (CMBS)
• ABS (Anti-​​lock Brake System)
• EBD (Elec­tronic Brake Distribution)
• G-​​CON (G-​​force Con­trol) technology
• VGR (vari­able steer­ing gear ratio)
• Intel­li­gent, dual fully auto­matic air con­di­tioner (uses GPS infor­ma­tion and a sun­light sen­sor to deter­mine the direc­tion and inten­sity of the sun�s rays and reg­u­late tem­per­a­ture and air out­put accordingly.)
• HID (High Inten­sity Dis­charge) Headlights

Unfor­tu­nately, the Inspire is only avail­able in a 5 speed auto­matic transmission.

[Source: Honda]

Yes, for the first time, the Nis­san GT-​​R will be sold directly into Australia!

As con­firmed on CarAd­vice, Nis­san Australia�s boss Shinya Han­nya has said that all strings will be pulled to get the GT-​​R dow­nun­der before 2009 (We cer­tainly hope so, but we’re look­ing for more like 2008, Mr Han­nya!). No other infor­ma­tion on localised spec­i­fi­ca­tions (if any are in the works) are cur­rently available.