A Tale of Two Subarus (or is it four? Five?)
In previous posts I've mentioned how ridiculous my fascination/fetish with cars and bikes has gotten. There are few ways (but they do exist) in which it's more exemplified than in these pics and the cars they show and I'll be talking about.
From front to back, an 07 Subaru Impreza WRX STi, and the 08 version of the same.
I've been a Driving School, Open Track, and High Performance Driving Event enthusiast since 1995 and an Instructor at such events since 2000. In fact, I'm so deeply immersed in the hobby, I'm part of a small cadre of Instructors who instructs new Instructors. If there's anything about which I'm as passionate as I am message boards, this is it.
It all started so long ago. I was running a computer training shop and bookstore on personal funds for about a year (it's where I met Meatloaf, our Programmer) and as so often happens with such businesses, the losses had tapered down to nearly but not quite zero at the same time my bank account did, so I needed to shut it down and fortunately was offered what was (by the standards of the day) a high-paying consulting position as a technical writer for a new Inventory Management System for USPS.
If that system is still in use and anyone has access to the manuals, they might find a bit of my sense of humor buried deep in those tomes. Screen shots in which tons of Maui Wowie were being ordered, for example. Yeah, I learned early on that nobody RTFM (look it up).
With my newfound "wealth" and the fact that the job was in Topeka, about 90 miles from home, combined with the unhappy fact that my wife decided that if I was going to live in an apartment most of the time 90 miles away, she should get the "good car", a Ford Probe I'd just bought and I should get the Hyundai Sonata. 5 days after I started the gig, I traded the Sonata in on a brand new 91 Mustang GT.
Side note: The VIN of the Mustang ends in 666, as does the VIN of my Datsun Roadster. What're the odds?
Anyway, I drove the Mustang back and forth to Topeka for a year, quickly putting 20k miles on it, and the first Winter I tried to use it, found it worse than useless. I also got tired of it getting scratched and dinged by being parked in the same garage as the wife's car, so I rented a storage unit and only got it out occasionally for drives in perfect weather, intending to simply sit on the car until it became valuable decades later.
It had become a garage princess. And since in the interim I'd moved from technical writing to contract programming, I'd reached yet another level of comparative affluence, so paid it off and bought a nice Dodge Dakota in which to get around most of the time. Many other cars followed.
After the Mustang had sat comparatively idle for about 4 years, my wife was reading the local BMW Club magazine which we got from joining the club after I bought a 76 530i with the intention of eventually restoring it, and she ran across an article about a driving school (See how I'm gradually getting back to the point?) and suggested I attend it. I had her tell me more about it and she said that I'd go to a 2 1/2 mile road course and be instructed how to get around the track safely and explore the outer limits of the car's performance while developing my ability to drive it at the limit.
I asked which car she propose I use for that and she quickly answered "The Mustang".
I looked at her as if she had two heads and quickly said "My Mustang on a race track with other cars being driven near their limits? Yeah, I won't park it next to another car but I'm gonna put it at that kind of risk?"
So, a few months later I'm at the racetrack with the Mustang.
I should mention as an aside that in all these years, I've only seen car/car contact once and it was not only unavoidable (in an Advanced/Instructor group a car went off then darted across the track in front of another car) and the damage was minor. Also, good a driver as I thought I was, during my first event I didn't reach anywhere near the Mustang's limits and have since learned that a stock Mustang's limits are VERY low. It was a humbling and extremely educational experience. What I'd learned that weekend kept me out of what certainly would've been an accident on the way home when a car spun on the wet highway in front of me.
The Mustang slowly evolved into strictly a track toy and hasn't been used on public roads in ages. The suspension is as good as it gets, the brakes halfway decent, and it wears Hoosier racing tires. It's a fast car. Or was until the engine got over-revved last year so now it's yet another project for which I don't have enough time.
Several years into the hobby, I was talking to a track friend about the fact that my new Suburban was rattling and squeaking a few months after buying it because I have to drive a long way on rough gravel roads to get to my house.
He suggested I check into Subarus since they're built specifically to handle rough roads and worse and that his personal favorite was the Impreza WRX, which he owned.
That seed planted, and later conveyed to the wife, she suggested several months later that we go check them out. We ended up leaving the dealership with a new 94 or 95 WRX and she drove it for a while then I decided to take it to the track with me once to see what it was like.
I brought a spare set of high-performance street pads and the tools to change them, and drove the car to the track on its stock, skinny all-season tires.
It was dry and warm Friday morning and I was absolutely hating the car. Yeah, it was more powerful than the Mustang, but had nowhere near the torque, and worse, it understeered something fierce. What we also call "Push". Basically, you turn the wheel, and the car wants to go straight but reluctantly will turn some fraction of the amount you told it to with the steering wheel.
I learned that the only way to really steer it was with much more aggressive trail-braking than I used in the Mustang (which also pushes, but it's very minor in comparison).
I called her after the first session and told her I hated the car and this was likely the only time it'd ever see the track.
The next session I was getting a little more used to the completely different way it wanted to be driven and found that though the tires were extremely lacking, it was starting to almost be fun. Called the wife and told her so.
Next session, I started getting really aggressive and completely wore out the stock brake pads and had to put the spares on. Since the spares were more aggressive, I found I could drive the car more aggressively. Called the wife and told her the car was "tolerable, at best" on the track.
Then it started raining. And I quickly learned that I barely slowed down at all. Aside from having to use the wipers, the car seemed oblivious to the fact that it was on a wet track and I suddenly was passing everyone.
Called the wife and told her I loved the car.
She never got to drive "her" car again. It only came out of the trailer for service or track use.
I added racing brakes and more track-worthy tires and got a 48 foot trailer so I could haul both it and the Mustang to the track with spares and tools and jump back and forth between cars at my whim.
Not a bad car at all. Once I figured out how to drive it.
Later I decided it was time to up the ante. The WRX was the more fun car to drive, but the Mustang was quite a bit faster. After a lot of research to decide whether to modify the WRX or get its bigger brother, the STi, and start with better raw material, that's the path I took and I got an 06 STi. Less than a year later, I traded it in on an 07 (seen in the above picture) because of its taller 2nd, 3rd, and 4th gears and redesigned (for better cooling) cylinder heads.
The friend who talked me into the WRX got himself an 05 STi later and my 06 and 07 are the same color (he still has the 05) and we run neck and neck on the track, often being the wolves, reeling in nearly everything else.
As also evidenced by the picture, I now have an 08. Probably one of the first 100 of them to get into an individual's hands in the States. I ordered it in October and I found out in January while at the airport waiting for my flight to London that the car had just arrived. I picked it up 9 week later, the day after I came back to the states and it currently has 800 miles on it and is going to the track for the first time next weekend.
I may keep the 07 just long enough to quantify the difference between it and the 08 on the track then sell it. It's only got 4100 miles on it and has been meticulously maintained, as is always the case with my cars, especially the track cars. My maintenance of the track cars is nothing short of over-the-top, with frequent tire and brake pad replacements, and changing the oil and flushing the brake fluid after every other track weekend, meaning my track cars typically only do 1000 miles per batch of synthetic oil.
Like most STi fans, I thought the 08 was pretty ugly when pictures first started emerging. Now that I own it, it's taken some time but I'm starting to find the car attractive. Its biggest failing is that it doesn't stand out in a crowd like the 07. But when you set the two next to each other and really look, the 07 looks very dated. And when you look closely enough and for long enough, the 08 reveals elements of "visual attitude" that you don't notice easily. Esepcially the major bulging of the fenders.
At 15 more horses than the 07 but on tires that aren't as good, it should be pretty close to the 07 in performance. In my street driving, I've become convinced that with equal tires, brakes, and springs, it'll be much faster than the 07.
The 06 and 07 were both purposely bought with zero options (not even the boost gauge, which blocks the important fuel gauge -- they get 4 mpg on the track and it's dangerous to let them get below half a tank because of the turbo) so they'd be as light as possible, but with the 08, since I'm 220 lbs, I figured another 20 or so pounds of equipment couldn't hurt it. Still no boost gauge, but it's got Sat Nav and a pretty decent sound system with sub-woofer. The hope being I'd find it a more tolerable street car, and I do, but mostly because of its softer springs, which will have to be replaced because they'll slow the car down on the track. So this one will also become largely track-only.
If anyone in the midwest is interested in an 07 with low miles and in perfect condition and meticulous maintenance, let me know. I won't be giving it away, but I won't be asking as much as the dealerships are asking for them. Their value went up after the 08 came out because most afficionados consider the 07 the last of the "good-looking" ones and demand has gone up.
So, the 04 or 05 (I think it was 05) WRX, then an 06, 07, and 08 and I've had 4 of these and still have two of them. The fifth one. Got the wife a Tribeca last year and that's when I decided to order the new STi, having seen the new WRX and figured if the 08 looks more aggressive, it might be tolerable, despite the fact that Chevy, Ford, and even Kia (surely among others) have cars that look nearly identical from any distance at all.
Here are a couple more pictures of the duo and I'll dig out some on-track pictures of the others since I've got plenty of them.
 |
