Taking a Ride with Mark Higgins on the Isle of Man
Ryan packs his bags and goes on the ultimate ride-and-drive for a fan of tarmac rally. And Subarus.
If you don't have the cojones take a lap of the Isle of Man TT course on a sportbike -- and you know that course takes maximum cojones -- the next best thing is to get a ride with Subaru rally driver Mark Higgins. Higgins holds the four-wheel lap record for the 37.73-mile Mountain course.
For the past three years, Subaru has been bringing Higgins and a WRX STI to Isle of Man for a shot at the lap record for cars, and each year Higgins ups the ante. This year, he broke his own lap record, setting a time of 17:35.139, at an average speed of 128.730 mph -- that's only 30 seconds shy of the motorcycle record. He did it in a special STI with a 550-hp WRC engine.
In this episode of /MY LIFE AS A RALLYIST, which Ryan filmed during a previous Isle of Man TT outing, he meets Higgins and gets a lap around the TT course. After that, it's over to an airfield where Ryan drives an Impreza N15 (Group N car). Finally, he goes to a tarmac stage to test the new JMR NR4 Subaru STI rally car.
Kind of a bucket-list outing for a Subaru guy. Lucky for us, Ryan brought his camera.