Subaru WRX vs Mercedes-Benz Marco Polo Activity

What's the difference?

Possibly one of the most perfect performance cars you can drive daily for the price. Dynamic and fun to drive, but also easy to live with thanks to the drive modes for extra comfort, the high ground clearance and the practicality that comes with four doors, lots of storage and a big boot.

The tS Spec B is the priciest WRX in the range, but compared to rivals it's also great value. A car I would buy with my own money for sure.

The Activity is a smooth-riding, comfortable tourer with a real touch of class, but it’s let down by the old-school entertainment system, its sometimes clunky and counter-intuitive design and engineering, and the lack of a kitchenette.

Having said that, this compact campervan is a more than adequate and classy introduction to the world of touring for those who want to dabble in the adventure-travel culture but not necessarily immerse themselves in it just yet.

The WRX tS Spec B stands out from its siblings with 19-inch matte-grey alloy wheels with gold Brembo brakes and if you don’t notice any of that, then surely you won’t miss the gigantic rear wing planted on the boot lid.

The air scoop jutting out of the bonnet like a pizza oven is standard across the WRX range and it looks tough. There’s the rear diffuser which also looks beefy but also a bit plasticky, and the quad exhaust, that’s nice, and so is the note which wafts out of them at idle.

The tS Spec B’s Recaro sports seats are also in other tS grades – they do look and feel good, and offer outstanding comfort and support. 

The rest of the cabin is much the same as other WRX grades with a large portrait-style screen, physical buttons for climate control, and yes, that is a traditional, mechanical handbrake you can see in images.

This is a sporty-looking although slightly outdated cabin compared with more modern rivals.

The Activity manages to avoid appearing too straight-up-and-down and boxy and for something based on its Vito stablemate, a van, that’s a mighty achievement. For an RV the Activity has plenty of presence without any undue bulkiness.

The pop-up roof with roof bed folds down to the roof-line quite neatly on its rear hinge for when the Activity is in motion, so it’s not an eyesore at all.

Of note is the fact the front seats swivel around to face the rear – obviously you only do that when the vehicle is stationary – and the three-seater bench at the very rear of the cabin lays flat, along with the second row, to make a double bed.

Overall, the Activity is a pleasant-looking vehicle, inside and out.

What’s so appealing about the WRX is that despite it being a performance car, it’s based on a regular 'small' sedan and with that comes all the practicality of a four-door, five-seater with a big 411-litre boot.

Space inside is excellent with plenty of room up front, while rear legroom is ample enough for me, at 189cm tall, to sit behind my driving position with plenty of headroom, too.

That all said the Recaro seats up front are on the snug side and I know they’re supposed to be, but I’m just saying they might not suit everybody – and by that I mean everybody.

Those with long legs might also find they have to adjust their driving position when letting out the clutch.

Big door pockets throughout, four cupholders, and hidey-holes for items throughout make for good cabin storage.

There are four USB ports and one 12V outlet, but no wireless phone charging to be found.

For starters, opening and closing the side doors is a breeze; the two sliding doors are both electric so once you have lifted the handle, the doors do the rest of the work for you.

There’s plenty of room inside – for front and rear passengers. The interior is all durable plastic, hard-wearing cloth and leather-trim (on the armrests etc) – well suited to a life of day-to-day family duties and touring fun.

Driver and front-seat passengers get adjustable armrests and some storage space – glove box, door pockets with a space each for a bottle – but, annoyingly, there is no centre console at all – but its absence is so the front seats can swivel around, as mentioned.

There are four bottle holders – two brackets, two indents – for rear passengers. Looking for more storage space? Check under the second-row seats for handy tucked-away recesses.

The media/entertainment system is not a touchscreen unit and is a real let-down; the 5.8-inch screen is small and the controls are via knobs and counter-intuitive.

Our Activity was $71,709 (as tested, with $8082 worth of optional extras on top of the base vehicle price, $63,627). 

The optional equipment included: 'Cavansite Blue' metallic paint ($1355), the aforementioned 'Driving Assistance Package' ($1345), fog lights ($309), 17-inch alloy wheels ($627), electrical sliding doors (left and right, $2264), seven seats ($1500), and a side-mounted silver awning ($682).

As standard it has two large double beds – the pop-up roof bed and the seats-folded-flat one – and you get the usual array of gear you’d expect in something like this – audio system (but no Apple CarPlay or Android Auto), daytime running lights, air con, etc – but you don’t get other stuff, such as a kitchenette, fridge or stove, that you might assume to be in something touted to be campervan-like. 

You do, however, have access to two batteries so you’re able to run your own fridge off of one battery, without laying awake at night in your roof-top bed worried about the main battery running out of juice.

Who doesn’t love the sound of a boxer engine? Well, probably your neighbours if you own a WRX. And while the tS Spec B doesn’t have any more power than any of the other WRXs – with it sharing the same 2.4-litre turbo-petrol four-cylinder boxer engine as the rest of the line-up – the 202kW and 350Nm feel like the perfect amount of power and torque for this package.

It’s probably been about six months since I last drove a car with a manual gearbox, and that shows how rare they’re becoming when you’re testing a new car nearly every week.

The six-speed manual in the tS Spec B has satisfying clunky shifts and a heavy-feeling clutch pedal, but it all plays along perfectly with this engine, sending the drive to all four wheels.

If you’re looking for a version of the tS Spec B with an automatic transmission you’ll be searching forever because this grade only comes with a manual gearbox. There are WRXs with autos – well, a CVT – the entry grade, the RS and the tS.

This Activity has a 2.2-litre, four-cylinder turbo-diesel engine (120kW at 3800rpm and 380Nm between 1400-2400rpm) with a seven-speed automatic transmission.

The WRX tS Spec B manual really likes its fuel – it’s a hungry beastie and everybody who’s about to get into the WRX life should be aware that, like most petrol performance cars, it’s not super fuel efficient.

Subaru is beautifully honest with its fuel consumption figures, which have the the WRX tS Spec B using 10.4L/100km in combined driving and 14.2L/100km in urban environment, which is so close to what we recorded - ours was 14.1/100km after mainly urban driving. You'll also have to feed it 95 RON.

The fuel tank is a healthy 63 litres in volume and that should give you a range of 606km – in theory. Do not test this theoretical range somewhere remote, okay?

Because the Activity is a rear-wheel drive van, we didn’t venture onto anything more serious than well-maintained gravel roads, and even then we took it very gently. 

Fuel consumption is a claimed 6.3L/100km – we recorded 9.3L/100km over 150km of mostly bitumen with a smattering of easy gravel track. It has a 70-litre fuel tank.

This may sound strange, but a few months ago I was squished into the tiny cockpit of a 2025 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 sitting at the traffic lights wishing I was in the 2020 Subaru WRX STI beside me. And having driven so many supercars and muscle cars in the past, many costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, I still see the WRX as being such a perfect daily driver performance car.

Sure, it doesn't have Porsche 911 dynamics or the straight-line acceleration of many electric cars, but it's the way the way this boxer engine interacts so beautifully the six-speed manual gearbox, combined with sticky all-wheel drive, a wonderful balance and such direct steering that make the WRX ts Spec B feel exactly right.

The tS Spec B is very much at home in the suburbs dotted with roundabouts and obstacles like speed bumps, but they all become part of the fun of driving this car in the same way that when you let it loose and open road it performs happily and so well, too.

The suspension does feel firm, but part of the big news of this tS Spec B is that it now has a drive mode function and this allow you to adjust the suspension, the steering and the throttle response to either sporty or comfort settings. This just makes this car an even more agreeable thing to live with daily.

Pretty damn good. For a big unit – 5140mm long (3200mm wheelbase), 1928mm wide, 1980mm high with a kerb weight of 2380kg – the rear-wheel drive Activity doesn't feel unwieldy on city or urban streets.

Its turning circle is 11.8m, which is better than plenty of large SUVs – and it can fairly punt along the open road, egged along by that 2.2-litre turbo-diesel.

The Activity’s seven-speed auto has a three-on-the-tree (Reverse-Neutral-Drive) and Park shifter stalk on the right-hand side of the tilt-and-reach-adjustable steering column. 

I haven’t spent a lot of time in Mercs of any sort, but once you’ve become used to the positioning of the shifter – and the fact your indicator and windscreen wiper stalks are one and the same, and to the left of the steering column – then it’s simple enough to work out how to get this Merc moving. Once you’ve used your hand to release the foot-engaged parking brake with the park-brake release handle below and to the right of the steering wheel, that is. (Exhale.)

On road, the Activity is a smooth sailor. Steering is light and responsive; the driver’s seating position is high and offers plenty of visibility out any window – as long as you don’t have the privacy curtains pulled shut. 

The driver and front passenger seats could, however, do with more under-thigh support. Our test example had five seats for travelling, with a bench seat for two or three people at the rear for when you are stationary; all seats are cloth.

Niggle: Lane-wander warning, part of the optional equipment list on our tester, is a bit touchy – it doesn’t allow for taking the race line through a corner – and sends a juddering sensation through the steering wheel to alert you.

The Activity has a maximum five-star ANCAP rating, based on crash tests of the Mercedes-Benz V-Class in 2014. There are airbags up front, but none for rear passengers, and the Activity has a reversing camera and parking sensors, front and rear, and forward collision alert as standard gear. 

Our tester also had the $1345 Driving Assistance Package ('Collision Prevention Assist', 'Blind Spot Assist', 'Lane Keeping Assist', rain-sensing wipers).

The WRX tS Spec B is covered by Subaru’s five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty, which while the standard for the mainstream segment, is behind the seven-plus terms we're now seeing from a lot of Chinese and Japanese car brands.

Servicing is recommended every 15,000km/12 months and can be expensive compared to other brands, with the five years of capped price servicing coming to $2692.

It has a three-year/200,000km warranty and a 24-hour roadside assist support package. Service intervals are scheduled for every 12 months or 25,000km.