1998 Subaru Prodrive Track Car

“ Wow, what a beast this is! Not for the faint-hearted.... ”
This very special and unique car pays fitting tribute to that competition heritage courtesy of a peerlessly high track orientated specification.

Background
It was only about 15 years between Fuji Heavy Industries diversifying into car manufacture with the introduction of the P1, or “Prototype 1,” and the company’s first forays into motorsport. Soon after renamed Subaru, the company used endurance events as a type of real-world development sandbox. Matters got way more serious in 1989, however, when the Subaru World Rally Team was created in partnership with Oxfordshire based Prodrive. Prodrive were responsible for preparing and entering the recently introduced Legacy RS into the World Rally Championship. It was this partnership, and the subsequent success of rally stars such as Colin McRae and Ari Vatanen, that helped move Subaru from a niche manufacturer to a serious global brand.

It was the crest of this wave that the new Impreza was able to ride when it arrived in 1993 to replace the long-serving Leone. The Finnish rally of the same year marked the first outing for the Prodrive prepared Impreza rally car in its distinctive blue and yellow 555 livery. Vatanen’s second place in that first rally was a definitive statement of intent and the first act in the making of a true rally, and road, hero car. The rest, as we all too often say, is history.

Overview
This amazing Subaru serves up plenty of synergies with that competition backstory, too. It started its life as a Prodrive Impreza WR Sport hailing from 1998. The “WR” stood for World Rally and endowed this special edition with a raft of extra goodies direct from the Prodrive store cupboard. Then owner, Mark, was convinced this would be all the Impreza he needed but was soon persuaded otherwise by friends and peers. The first step was to make a range of Stage 1 enhancements including revised intake arrangements, a remap and de-cat exhaust system. Round 1 yielded an impressive 320bhp on the dyno.

Eager to see how his car fared in competition, Mark arranged some runs down Santa Pod’s legendary ¼ mile strip. His standard five speed gearbox had other ideas, quickly going from five speeds to no speed on the way to Santa Pod. Rather than damping his ardour this dragstrip disaster served to precipitate the next bout of upgrade fever. A six speed STi gearbox was fitted together with an API lightened flywheel and an Exedy Hyper twin-plate clutch. Employing the age-old petrolhead’s mantra of “in for a penny, in for a pound,” Mark commissioned Enginetuner Limited of Plymouth to not only strip and rebuild the EJ20 engine, but to go full Steve Austin (the bionic one) and make it “faster, better, stronger.” This work (more of which shortly) was undertaken in 2010 at a cost of over £9,000.

Mark then turned his attention to putting the car on a strict diet. Out came the standard interior along with “nice to haves” like the air conditioning and heater. The most drastic measure, perhaps, was when the roof was chopped off in favour of a carbon fibre replacement. These weight saving measures ultimately saw the car fitted with a “Superwide” four to two conversion body kit from Subaru styling gurus at ABW Motorsport. Numerous other aerodynamic mods combine with a stunning set of 10 x 18-inch XXR wheels to round out the car’s one-off track slaying demeanour. The latest dyno metrics confirm a 520bhp power output combined with 490 Ib-ft of torque. Wow!

Estimate: £20,000 - £30,000

View Current Bid Price HERE