psynthetic

That'd be cool.

Liberty hit the mark, you can get better, but it's all about $$$, also, once you get past a certain point in quality you start paying more for smaller gains.
Alpine is just as good as any other mainstream brand you'll put in there for the most part.

The thing is, if your Subaru has a decent rumble to it i doubt you'll hear any improvement in your sub bass with a "brilliant" amp unless the car is off. ;-)

It's not a "brilliant" amplifier.. but it's got the right power ratings and frequency response to do what you want.

It's a little hard to to tell more than the basics because the sub's documentation is super abbreviated and the link to the PDF for the amp you mentioned is in 3 languages and none of them are english so I can't see the amps damping factor, slew rate or anything else.. although i think there is a formula to work out the damping factor of an amp from the impedance values..

Make sure you run it in 2ohms not 4ohms for your sub. (regardless of what one of the two links it was in the end..)  

At 2ohms the RMS output of that amp is more than double the rated RMS input of your sub (almost triple..), this is good because it means you wont send your amp into clipping (which is bad) easily.
It's a bad thing in that if you're reckless and turn your amp up too much it'll trash your sub. (Keep your levels are nominal gain or less)

First of all, I have to disagree, a sealed box will always have a smaller size (if the design is any good), which is why most car setups have a sealed box.

 

I reckon all those small box car setups are putting practical sizing ahead of fidelity or using air pressure to make up for poor braking, not because it's "better". It either has sufficient volume for the air that will be displaced or it doesn't. But that's entering into the subjective area of individual setups.

The majority of everything else you said is quite true (or at least true enough for our purposes here today) 

- EDIT: I probably shouldn't of made an "absolute" statement like "ported boxes are smaller: as some porting enclosures are quite elaborate and require depth to do their thing rather than just a bit of venting. Fair call.

However I just not keen on using tricks like porting. Given the choice (and budget) i'd rather get a full range speaker setup that does the job precisely than a ported setup in ANY home/car application. Big PA systems you don't really get the option of a sealed rig..

JL Audio defied this. My 12" came in a huge ported box and it really punches.

I'm not sure I follow? I'm not saying you can't use a big box? Or that porting can't produce a subjectively pleasing result (just that it uses distortion to do it)

Infact, depending on the frequency you want to reinforce you'll be forced into using a certain time delay on your port, which means either a longer/deeper box, OR something called a "folded horn" or "J Bin designs etc, where it's forced to turn corners to achieve an even greater time delay...