.:ImprezaSport.net Forums:.: How it Started - .:ImprezaSport.net Forums:.

I`d always promised myself I`d own a turbo`d car at 21. I wasn`t too fussy at the time about what it was going to be but it had to have a turbo on it. 3 days after I turned 21 I swapped my Rover 220 GTi for a Fiesta RS turbo and soon became addicted to the rush of the turbo spooling up and the sound of the dump valve. It wasn`t long before I started to get problems with it though, first the manual boost controller that had been fitted by a previous owner failed while locked wide open giving me 1 bar of boost resulting in massive fuel cut problems. Shortly after that the gearbox went so a friend managed to source me a replacement and we fitted it over a weekend. While fitting we found all sorts of issues with the car. The suspension didn`t match, the gear linkages were held together with cable ties and it had 2 wiring looms fitted. By this stage I`d had enough and swapped i for a Fiesta xr2i. Having been used to the turbo kicking in I didn`t like the lack of power that it seemed to have and so withing a couple of weeks I`d made a trip to see the bank manager with the intentions of getting myself something silly. Supplied with a wad of cash, I went out in search of a Skyline! Having looked around at a few I wasn`t convinced by them and found that although they are big cars, didn`t offer me a great deal of room. By now a friend (the same one that sourced the gearbox) was nagging me to get an Impreza and so, we went out in his STi8 in search of a decent classic for myself. The first garage we went to though the car was a mess. It suffered from major piston slap and had teeth marks all over the interior from the previous owner leaving a dog in there from time to time. Unbelievably, they wouldn`t let us take the car for a test drive as they believed it to be too powerful to let us take out, even though we`d turned up in an STi8 with cash

From here we set off around the island looking for another that had been seen for sale. Just when we had given up looking for it and were heading back to my friends house for a coffee, it drove past us, so we made a sharp U-turn, when safe to do so , and followed the owner home. A short test drive later and a quick handshake and I`d agreed to pick it up 2 days later(it was saturday).

I picked the car up straight after work on the Monday evening and was happy to be aproud owner of a standard MY97 Dark Green Mica Uk Turbo. Almost immediately, I ordered a set of mudflaps and a Magnex for it as seen in the earliest picture I have:

From here I started to mod it as and when I could afford to and it went through various phases:

Eventually I got it looking pretty much how I`d wanted, essentially I`d copied a friend of mine`s ideas as I liked the way it looked and, to me at least, it had that rally slag feel to it:


Within a week of me fitting the finishing touches to the exterior, with the sun very low and facing straight down the road that I lived in, I was temporarily blinded by sunlight and hit a milk float in it


I fully intended on rebuilding it back to its former glory but then I got an offer I couldn`t refuse............