The Solo season is essentially over, it snowed yesterday and leaves are starting to turn. Winter is almost here, and I’m trying hard not to demonstrate the symptoms of being sick in the head. My FRS is ok, but I want another car: a real Subaru.
When I owned this car, I acknowledged that it was the greatest car I had ever owned. It was not the fastest (although it certainly wasn’t the slowest! Eyes on you ZN6!!!), but it was floggable in all situations, fun and easy to wrench, carried four people comfortably, was demonically fast on ice and actually handled really really well dodging cones in the summer time (gasp!). It was a car that didn’t do anything GREAT, but did everything pretty damn well. I’ve owned a lot of cars, and none ever were so willing to adapt different personalities.
So let’s get in on again GD Impreza!
This car (my old car), is currently in Andrew’s project pile. It was purchased by him, a little worse for wear, from the gent that I sold it to… and has since incinerated a valve, and suffered through a hail storm.
It sounds like a bit of a sad story, but it is an an entirely reasonable ordeal for this ultimate vehicle to endure mid life. Would I buy it back? Hell yes. But Andrew shares the same feelings that I do, and I’m not so attached to it that I’m willing to make it worth his while.
Although that freaking MOMO Handoru and STI cluster really tugs on me nicely.
Doing this all again, I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m not going to remove the rear differential. Instead I’ll spend the money on a KAAZ, or some other clutch type diff that would actually allow me to pull into my park spot at CO-OP without drawing black lines on the ground. Everything else can be exactly the same.
Or I can buy a cheap ass 2.5RS, enjoy honest cable actuated and turbocharger free throttle response and never concern myself with odd misfire codes and finding exactly Petro Canada 94. Despite a half cut of horsepower, this is something that I actually contemplated when I owned the car. That… and the 1.5 times EG33 swap.
Or I could confidently decide that the line of work I’ve undertaken will support another car that is not a project, and just buy myself an honest GD STI. GD’s are the ultimate anyways…
Writing this now… selling the ZN6 comes to mind… but like I said in the beginning, “I’m trying hard not to demonstrate the symptoms of being sick in the head.”
Never mind beautiful Lexus gauge clusters and winching plus triple locking trucks on 35’s.