Motorsport
The supercharged grade RX-R and RX-RA was widely used for rallying in Japan. RX-RA was a motorsports trim grade with more close ratio gears and harder suspensions than RX-R. You can still see some entrants using Vivio at WRC Rally Japan.
In 1992, at the Paris-Beijing marathon raid, a private entrant ran the Vivio RX-R with the EN07X engine. Most people who saw the car imagined its early retirement but was faster than works team Mitsubishi Pajero at the prologue stage, and ran for more than a week until it broke its suspension. The car made it to the finishing line unofficially after repairs were carried out, with no other serious troubles.
The most famous appearance of Vivio in an international motorsport event was in the 1993 round of the Safari Rally under the decision of former factory driver and Subaru Technica International founder and team owner Noriyuki Koseki to promote the car. He made the decision to enter three of the sports model Vivio Super KK driven by Masashi Ishida, local driver Patrick Njiru and up and coming WRC star Colin McRae on his Safari debut. "Super KK" is the FIA homologation name for the RX-R grade, in rally trim the 660 cc engine produced 85 PS (63 kW) at 6,000 rpm.
Only one of the three cars finished where it settled for 12th place driven by Njiru.
McRae did manage to set the fastest stage time before managing up to two stages up to Makindu before retiring with suspension failure. He later remarked about the car "You can hide the whole car in every single pothole along the route!". Ishida later retired with head gasket failure.
This appearance was satirized by cartoonist Jim Bamber for the Yumping Yarns cartoon of Car & Car Conversions magazine, when he depicted McRae driving his Vivio underneath an elephant.
Read more about this topic: Subaru Vivio