1996 – Subaru Wrx

Originally got the car off a good friend that needed some work done on a drift car he had. Long story short, it was every aspect of the vehicle.
While I was working on that vehicle. I spotted the Subaru sitting in state of disrepair and asked what he was doing with it. He said he had it for years! He had it painted then the engine blew. In the end he gave me the Suby for the work I had done. Brung the car home and ripped it all apart.

A friend turned up a week later and had a v2 wrx engine to buy for cheap so we put that in and I converted the gearbox rwd. Well that didnt last long and I sold the car to my brother in-law. He was a panel beater and straightened the car up shaved and painted the engine bay, 4wd converted it again. Fast forward a couple years and he was wanting a gc8 sedan instead. So I brought the car back off him. This time it came back with a version 3 engine that was barely running as he took his forged engine out for the sedan. So I decided that I wasn’t going to run that engine in this car.

So I started hunting for a complete package and I stumbled across a crashed v-limited gc8 version 5 sti in Auckland. Went up and had a look. The body was severely damaged from a crash but it ran beautifully and all the oils and fluids were in awesome condition and it was very low kms. So I brought it and brung it back home to Hawke’s bay and started ripping it down to put it all into the hatch from the complete wiring loom to the full running gear.

Took me about a year from buying the car back to getting it road legal. I wanted to keep the car looking stock and it had a front mount intercooler with non turbo bonnet so I hunted for another turbo v5 alloy bonnet and had that painted to suit and fitted the gold sti wheels.

Have really enjoyed assembling this car this time around with a quality sti running gear it drives really solid. It’s definitely still a work in progress but I’ve been enjoying it never the less at a lot of events already✌️