Bagged 16 WRX Premium 6MT

The Story

After dreaming of owning a clean, bagged VA chassis WRX, I was able to purchase this car from a crazy Facebook Marketplace find. The listing was over 2 years old, and after shooting the previous owner a message in the dark, it turns out he re-listed the car for sale, as he intended to sell it years ago but decided to hold off on selling it until when I bought it in 2022. The car has a very interesting backstory, which I will probably never fully understand what exactly happened. This car was originally sold in California, and after around 30,000 miles from the original owner, it ended up having transmission problems according to the CarFax report, and got multiple inspections of the clutch before the entire transmission got replaced by Subaru. Only a short month later, it ended up getting a shortblock by Subaru as well. After that job was completed, it seems like the original owner decided to lemon law the car in California, and it sort of bounced around dealer auctions for a while, until the 2nd owner purchased it from a dealer in NY, then registering it in NJ. The 2nd owner is a big mystery for me - I was able to find his contact information inside of the glove box when I bought the car from the 3rd owner, but I've never been able to contact him. This owner did a ton of modifications to the car, where he added the Airlift, Work CR2P wheels, STI swapped the interior, and got an entire forged engine build done (I didn't know about this part when I bought the car). After he owned it for around 3 years, he traded it into an Acura dealership, and then the 3rd owner bought it. This 3rd owner slowly let the maintenance schedule of the car slip away, and when I got a PPI done, it had quite a few leaks and sensor issues. We ended up negotiation a fantastic deal for me, and so that's where the story starts for me. The car was in pretty rough shape, but had potential, since it has never been driven in the snow before. The Work CR2Ps were trashed from brake dust sitting on the chrome, the engine was leaky, and there was some rather sketchy wiring work done. I've spent the past 2 years really cleaning the car up and adding nice performance parts, and in June 2023, the engine finally blew up on the way back from Wicked Big Meet. During the teardown, I discovered it had forged pistons, rods, and springs, which was quite the shock for this mystery build. I ended up putting an OEM FA20 block in the car, and saved the built heads, since I mostly do highway driving. This build hit my 300whp goal on a super hot dyno day, so I'm really happy with how things have turned out. The plan for this build going forward is to slowly add tasteful mods, and keep it as a clean example of what a bagged OEM+ VA should be, in my opinion. Thanks for checking it out!