Used to own one 07 RX, so I will try to give you the best description of my experience.
Unline 00-05RX, this is DOHC engine, EJ207 running 160HP on 6400RPM - since there is no turbo and power is linear, at 7200RPM you will be getting 170hp, if everything is fine with the car.
It lacks the turbo boost at 3000RPM, and it will take quite long to build up the power, and you will want to keep them in high RPM in order to get the most power out of them.
It is by no means a slow car! We have done some spins over wicklow with WRXes, and I did manage to keep up most of the time, true, while I was full throttle, they were probably going half throttle, but on twisty roads, you will be able to keep up. On straight, WRX will probably eat you alive
If you keep the car on 3rd gear, which is where its happy and 3000rpm+ it will reward you with nice smooth and satisfying power output. You can do mountain roads hooning and be fairly safe as the car still shares tons of points from its racing brother, especially handling.
Getting to handling, thats something where hawkeye's shines the most, the steering wheel and feedback from it feels so good, power steering disables as soon as you hit 40kmh and you have full control over the car.
Now a few bad points about MY06+
All of the cars were equipped with Secondary Air system pump and two valves. All this system does, is pump fresh air into exhaust in front of catalyst, in order to speed up the catalyst effectiveness. Unfortunately, this system often gets moisture inside, which then results in rubber seals to get damaged, or rust building up inside, either clogging the pump, or blocking the valves from working properly.
Replacement of these parts is a joke, its hard to find them aftermarket, and subaru asks roughly 300e per valve and 400e per pump.
The WRX and STI owners solve this by reflashing their ECU, unfortunately RX ECU is non flashable, therefore the codes cannot be removed(at least wasnt at the time I owned RX).
Second issue with the car I had over the two years I owned one, was its sensitiveness to bad petrol. It was enough to take bad petrol once, and for three tanks, car behaved funny and between 2-3k rpm it was lagging, but then after 3k rpm, it started flying. This was caused by Knock sensor. Solution? Reconnect battery for 30 minutes to reset ECU after you drove the tank off. Prevention? Go to high grade quality petrol stations and avoid the cheapos.
Thats all bad things I know off.
Outside of this, the car gave me bazilions of smiles per gallon, its savage car, a bit slow for some, but on other hand, there is no Turbolag, as soon as you tickle the throttle, the car goes with full power it has, and its by no means a slow car.
