There have been quite a few “leaked” Impreza pictures all over the internet lately regarding what the new 2008 Impreza and its big sister WRC counterpart are going to look like. Some of the pictures look completely fake, but others look plausible. The hatchback shots look totally photoshopped in the rear, but still leave lots of room for questions. Interestingly though each of the pictures shows the Impreza with Pirelli stickers. It’s a well known fact that the Subaru World Rally Team has booted its longtime sponsor Pirelli for the rubber of BFGoodrich. So perhaps these were some old concepts from a long time ago that were never actually destined for production.

The big debate is whether the new WRC car is actually going to be a hatchback like many of the other front runners in competition (Citroen’s new C4 and the Ford Team’s Rally Focus) but it is all speculation at this point. While many would agree that Subaru should stick to its long history of running sedans on the WRC circuit, a Subaru hatch would be an unexpected surprise.

WRC Mexico will be the official debut event of the new Impreza so it’s still anyone’s guess as to what will be rolling off the truck that day. However, if switching over to a hatch is what it would take to get Petter Soldberg, Chris Atkins, or even Travis Pastrana up on the podium then most rally fans shouldn’t have a problem with it.