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.
www.thedrive.com

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.

Mike Spinelli Avatar

Mike Spinelli

VP of Content

A sucker for Ford-era Jaguar XJs and glitchy, early-90s BMW V12s, Mike was the founding editor of car culture site Jalopnik, and a former editor-in-chief of 0-60. He's also a co-host of the TV show /DRIVE on NBC Sports, which can be seen from time to time on NBCSN, usually after midnight.