Today, the first trailer for the new Peacock Twisted metal series decrease. This is a stream-only TV show, based on a video game, because those things are hot right now and people seem to enjoy making them. Sometimes they are even good!
I don’t know if Twisted metal looks good or not, because I’ve never played the game. But I DO know that the trailer has a lot of images of Subaru bugeye, and I have a few thoughts on that. Specifically, one person thought: What’s going on with this car?
In case you lost it:
This is probably the best-lit whole car shot and we can see a few things. It’s an orange bugeye with a vented hood, it has some flares mounted on the fenders, and it’s wearing an STi wing. That’s the little tidbit that started me thinking — we don’t have STi bugeye in the US, so is this the WRX in cosplay?
Maybe. No hood scoop, usually disqqualifies for a Subie from WRX-dom, but this is the rare case where that might actually not happen. Most enthusiasts know that the WRX’s hood serves to bring air into the top-mounted intercooler, but only Subie loyalists know its second purpose: pulls hot air out of the turbo. This vented hood can’t do the former, but it can do the latter. Meaning, if the top-mounted intercooler had been swapped out for a front-mounted cooler, we might be looking at a factory turbocharged car here.
Conveniently, the show gives us a front view of the car. It’s inconvenient, it’s extremely dark, because that’s just the way movies and television are now. Blow the image out in Photoshop and increase brightness Doesn’t help either — There is no information behind the previous bumper to reveal. If only there were some other way for us to say, something that distinguishes a modified Impreza from a real WRX.
Oh, that’s convenient. Pedal shot, showing real, metal WRX footpads! Impreza, launched in 2003, only has plain black rubber. Sure, these can be carried over, but why would you? If you’ve been busy arming your Subie with fender-mounted machine guns, pedal feel is probably the last thing on your mind.
So the car in Twisted metal seems to be a real WRX. It’s a damn mystery that no one thinks is a mystery, and doesn’t even really need to be solved, but damn it if it isn’t solved.. Hopefully that means a show full of boxer rumbles, turbocharger rumbles, and a perfectly real-world, real-time mid-season episode where 4-cylinder revs Anthony Mackie broke down and he needed to swap out a junk engine because the piston slap damaged the cylinder wall. If this program included that, it would get a perfect score from me.
