Frieend considering an Imprezza 5 door premium

Subaru's make excellent cars. I was a Subaru driver myself before I purchased a 2016 Civic Touring. The reason I did not stick to the Subaru brand were numerous, but the primary reason is that I no longer live in the snow belt. AWD is a nice feature, but it costs a lot in weight and fuel efficiency and any benefit you get from AWD in day to day driving can be replicated with a good traction control system. If you absolutely must drive in snow, just putting snow tires on your regular car will go a long way towards getting you around.

Subaru's have to make trade off's to stay competitive. Chief among them is sound deadening. You will find that in general, with a few excepts, subaru's tend to be pretty loud on the road. Subaru has done an admiral job in using an in-house developed CVT to increase fuel economy, but in the case of the impreza, you are stuck with a 140 ish hp motor. The Civic will get much better mileage with nearly 40 more horses under the hood.
You will also see other tradeoff's in interior materials as well. AWD probably adds about 1000 dollars (in Subaru's economies of scale case) to the cost of a car, so you have to find areas to cut to stay competitive.

It ends up coming down to what do you want? Do you want an bulletproof drivetrain that will basically never break? OR do you want some more creature comforts, a better ride and more fuel economy.

Frieend bought an imp. 5dr. hatch. Same 174"long and about 20 lb/hp as the 03 civic, with engine light on, small crack on exhaust manifold, 200,000m engine (that did not burn oil), inspection is due. Fwiw I think the c turbo is close to 18#/ hp.
Some things,,, looked like a hatch compared to Civic,, the headrests are removable from all seats, this tiny feature increases function and versatilty.,,instant access knobs are used to select climate & music. Heated seats were the big draw. Rochester ny is in and out of the snow belt, not huge but it can come in a hurry from certain lake effects. Ivory int. is not offered on the civic htd. st. turbo, just black.
20,914 final price w (750 for the trade) (that car may have landed on the lawn with a $5oo sign on it.)
Came with body colored splash guards, weather mats, hatch mat, net, & etc,etc, useful accessories.
Even with fantastic awd it is probably a couple G cheaper than Civic turbo.
Tax not included but it is 8% Thank you all for your well considered replies .
This is the 4th year for this imp. version and all the bugs are out, no cvt surging. HU failing.