Subaru's new world rally car

The fully-pimped STi is revealed today exactly as it will look when it carries Subaru's new competition colours into the World Rally Championship at the end of the month.

And Aussie Chris Atkinson will be at the wheel.

The World Rally Car version of the regular roadgoing STi has been under development for more than a year at Subaru's competition skunkworks, Prodrive, in Britain and is being rushed into action at the Acropolis Rally in Greece from May 29-June 1.

If the pumped-up shape looks familiar, it's because the latest Impreza WRC was used as inspiration for the regular showroom car.

But that's about where the similarities end.

The WRC competition car has a fully-tweaked turbo boxer with 225 kiloWatts of power, a figure choked down for safety, but a stonking 500 Newton-metres of torque.

The body panels are carbon fibre, there is a massive safety rollcage and the fully-active all-wheel drive system and competition dampers are all unique and created just for the WRC attack.

The first appearance of the new Impreza has been brought forward several months after a disastrous two-year run with the old car, which was seriously outpaced by both the Citroen C4 and Ford Focus in the world title fight.

Subaru's rally boss, David Richards - who also controls Ford Performance Vehicles and the Ford Performance Racing in Australia - has promised the car will be ready to fight at the front from its first start in Greece, which is good news for Atkinson and his team-mate, former world champion Petter Solberg.