I have heard anecdotes about arranged marriages that result in true love. I believe those stories. I do not mean to imply a belief that all arranged marriages can result in true love. I merely accept the idea that the act of loving can result in a feeling of love. I also accept that many arranged marriages likely result in a spectrum of non-love… ranging from hate to indifference.
The 2nd BC was an arranged marriage. It was a relationship that was betrothed by practicality and assumed mutual interest. When my 1st Subaru Legacy Sports Sedan died – heaven hold her – by throwing a rod through the closed deck block [fuel system o-ring placement can be all important], I had to decide between revitalizing the car with a rebuild, or resigning it to the wreckers. The Winestone body had already-repaired rusty quarters that were already rusting again, and some inexplicable and inconsolable chassis electrical issues to boot. So I parted that rig out [goodbye Apexi intake, and who knew a crossmember could be in such high demand!] and moved on to the university-student-budgeted Suzukolet Trackick.
But not everything sold. Sure everybody texted about the Group N mounts, but nobody seemed to care about that trusty shot-peen-hardened 5-speed gearbox. And nobody was willing to pay me what I needed to let go of my ceramic-coated, divorced-downpipe, catless full 3″ turbo-back Custom Exhaust System.
So a beauty drivetrain including LW flywheel and spanky clutch sat in the barn.
The TD04L and stock VF-11 turbos sat on my coffee table.
Boxes of JECS mafs and injectors bounced around shelves.
And the barn was patient.
And the barn owners were patient.
And the FunRunner was good.
And then one day I gave in to the spontenaity [errr, sickness] in my head and I said to myself, the hibernation must end and the most pragmatic application is to implant those parts organ-donor style, and so I dissected the classifieds and found a perfect project with a pumped-up motor that was laying waste to its unworthy OEM 4speed Eletronic Automatic Transmission – and BEHOLD! the rarest of the first-gen Legacy: a body without rust that is deserving of buying 2x one-way plane tickets and taking the then-girlfriend-now-wife on a looney-tunes sight-unseen car-acquiring road trip from Oregon up through Coeur D’Alene [hellllooo wooden roller coaster] with, yes, one 36 hour unscheduled pit-stop in Spokane to discuss wiring diagrams via roaming-long-distance to Josh in Texas who I have never actually met in person but whom is the saviour of all BC Legacy endeavorists worldwide who saved this endeavorist that day and in days to come when a year was spent at first in physical surgery but then mostly in post-op troubleshooting of the intracacies of undoing the layers of customization and neglect in order to add your own layer of modification and – yes, perhaps you could call it disregard, but it is also fair to say submission to greater priorities – neglect, which eventually, inevitably, leads to another honest full-effort attempt to clean up wiring and get rid of CELs permanently and finally have the impressive little 90’s car that could, and does, that warrants selling the project with a clear conscience and peace in ones heart.
Because I never fell in love with the 2nd BC6.
I did love it, in the sense that Love is a verb. I rescued it, I nursed it, I invested in it, I improved it, and I found it a home where it will be appreciated. I was patient, and I was kind.
But the feeling of love never attached to that collection of electro-mechanical systems. I did experience happy feelings, but the truth is those feelings were actually nostalgic-love directed at my first Legacy.
The gravity of first-car-love and memory of young-adult-emotions pulled my hearts attention all the way past the orbit of an objectively better thing, keeping my emotions captive in the black hole of non-rational but oh-so-real past feelings.
The past is hyper-real.
