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I am also going to need to be careful when dropping a gear to overtake. I know of a couple of Tuscan owners who early in their ownership spun on quiet dual carriage ways doing this. They were caught out by the lack of a big flywheel and so unexpected amounts of engine braking when lifting the clutch after dropping down a gear.

I'm used to a fairly light flywheel on the Impreza, but at least there all four wheels get the same level of engine braking when you lift the clutch.

Before you go, you may want to practice making proper "racing" down changes in your impreza. When you declutch for the down change, you want to "blip" the throttle to raise the engine speed to what it will need to be in the lower gear. You engage the clutch when the engine speed matches what it should be for the gear you're entering. Theoretically, you should do this with upshifts, too, but it is less of a problem (no blip required, you just engage the clutch at the correct moment -- neither too soon or too late).

This can be done under braking, but its difficult to do while applying steady pressure on the brake. The technique is called "heel and toe" downchanging, but when you actually do it you sort of roll your right foot over onto the accelerator while the left side of your right foot uses the brake pedal. Doing this well takes years of practice.

"Rev matching" your down changes takes a day or so of practice. You can get it to the point where the only evidence of the down change is the increased noise of the higher engine speed.

When you get that good at it, you will find that it is not necessary to even use the clutch. The easiest way to start learning is to work on your upshift from 3rd to 4th without the clutch. You let off the throttle, and for a brief moment before the engine braking kicks in, your geartrain is "unloaded", meaning there is neither accelerating or decelerating torque. At this moment, you pull the lever out of gear. Wait until the engine speed drops to the exact speed it will be in the next gear, then firmly pull the lever into 4th. This is very easy from 3rd to 4th and 4th to 5th. Harder from 2nd to 3rd and very difficult from 1st to 2nd (this is because the engine speed differential is less and the torque differential is less; you need to be more exact in the lower gears because the synchronizer rings in the gearbox can only provide so much torque).

To downshift without the clutch, you pull the lever out of 4th, "blip" the throttle, then push it into 3rd at just the right moment when the "revs match". This is what you should be doing when you use the clutch, also. It minimizes wear on the clutch and it minimizes the torque jerk on the rear wheels. Anyhow, with some practice, you can drive to work in rush hour never using the clutch -- as long as you don't come to a complete stop. So, what is the function of the clutch? It is there to start & stop the car, and to cover up any tiny errors you make matching your gear changes.

Smoothness is the key to performance driving, and gear changes are no exception (in fact, they're probably the most important). Besides all that, matching up correctly adds a ton of fun to driving!

The people who spin out on a downchange are just putting the clutch in, ham-handedly slamming it into a lower gear, then dumping out the clutch suddenly. It's not the engine braking that spins them, exactly. Well, it is, but its the sudden jerk they get when the engine needs to race up to the correct speed. This can be completely eliminated with correct technique. You can drive a Camry like that, but if you do that in a race car you break it. It's not good for the Camry, either, its just that they don't have enough torque to damage anything. Power requires some finesse.