Recoil Scooby Specialist

Member#: 278895 Join Date: Apr 2011 Chapter/Region: NWIC Location: Olympia, WA Vehicle:

2004 GG WRX

@s hitwgn (no spaces)



04 WRX Wagon - a different approach. Disclaimer : Many of you will find the content in this thread to be sacrilegious in nature.



A bit of history:



When I decided to tear this car down and rebuild it from the ground up, I had been having a sour taste in my mouth regarding the Subaru "scene" for some time. The 2004 WRX had been my dream car since I had seen the early commercials for them on TV. For a time after I purchased my WRX, I was enticed by many of the things that are now stereotypical of Subaru owners. This turned into doing the typical "full bolt ons" build. I enjoyed this fully for a short period of time and almost over night became sick of it. I started to fall further and further away from the brand-biased nonsense that unfortunately plagues a lot of this community.



Somewhere between the endless photos of Subarus with mud flaps and knock off wheels all over the internet, I felt it was time to push in my own direction with the car. I looked at all of the car makes and models that I liked, and borrowed ideas where appropriate. It made sense to me to strip the car down to its bare bones and start fresh. In retrospect, I should have sold the car and bought a shell to work with.



Here's the car when I made the choice to push in the direction I'm headed now. I often look back at photos like this and wonder what the hell I'm doing.





The story so far:



When people ask me if I'm building a show car, I always respond something like this: "I'm building a car that will hopefully be so well built that I can bring it to and enter it in a show. I want a driving car first." I've tried to keep that attitude foremost in my mind as I go along through this process.



I had a vision in my head of the direction I wanted to go. I knew I wanted to build a car that would put me in the 500AWHP-600AWHP range. I also wanted very aggressive body styling with a focus on function as opposed to form. I drew up this sketch once I had made decisions about how I wanted to proceed. It should give you an idea of the direction I'm going.





After doing most of the major tear down on the car, I sent it up to Godspeed Fabrication to have the first of the fabrication work completed. I had decided that if I wanted to make the car truly wide body, I should give it big enough wheel wells to take advantage of the new roomier fenders. In addition, I deleted some brackets and had the unnecessary holes in the engine bay, and the firewall welded.









None of the off the shelf full wide body kits really caught my eye, so I decided to mix and match parts from two manufactures to get the look that I was after. The front fenders are Chargespeed vented +25mm. The rear fenders are L'aunsport. Here they are, along with a Chargespeed lip mocked up onto the car.





The car sits just about 6 feet wide front and rear and has room for a 12" wide wheel inside the wheel wells.



At this point I felt confident about the direction I was taking the car and finished tearing the car down to a bare shell. I spent a lot of time cleaning, degreasing and removing excess seam sealer. It's still not where it needs to be, but it is incredibly tedious work, so I do as much as I can in a sitting. Due to some really poor decision making and workmanship somewhere in the car's history, I also had to remove the roof skin that was on it.









Most recently the car was mocked up with a mock up EJ257 and V7 STI 6 speed and sent up to Speedfactory Racing to have the exhaust system built. That is where the car is located right now.

When I decided to tear this car down and rebuild it from the ground up, I had been having a sour taste in my mouth regarding the Subaru "scene" for some time. The 2004 WRX had been my dream car since I had seen the early commercials for them on TV. For a time after I purchased my WRX, I was enticed by many of the things that are now stereotypical of Subaru owners. This turned into doing the typical "full bolt ons" build. I enjoyed this fully for a short period of time and almost over night became sick of it. I started to fall further and further away from the brand-biased nonsense that unfortunately plagues a lot of this community.Somewhere between the endless photos of Subarus with mud flaps and knock off wheels all over the internet, I felt it was time to push in my own direction with the car. I looked at all of the car makes and models that I liked, and borrowed ideas where appropriate. It made sense to me to strip the car down to its bare bones and start fresh. In retrospect, I should have sold the car and bought a shell to work with.Here's the car when I made the choice to push in the direction I'm headed now. I often look back at photos like this and wonder what the hell I'm doing.When people ask me if I'm building a show car, I always respond something like this: "I'm building a car that will hopefully be so well built that I can bring it to and enter it in a show. I want a driving car first." I've tried to keep that attitude foremost in my mind as I go along through this process.I had a vision in my head of the direction I wanted to go. I knew I wanted to build a car that would put me in the 500AWHP-600AWHP range. I also wanted very aggressive body styling with a focus on function as opposed to form. I drew up this sketch once I had made decisions about how I wanted to proceed. It should give you an idea of the direction I'm going.After doing most of the major tear down on the car, I sent it up to Godspeed Fabrication to have the first of the fabrication work completed. I had decided that if I wanted to make the car truly wide body, I should give it big enough wheel wells to take advantage of the new roomier fenders. In addition, I deleted some brackets and had the unnecessary holes in the engine bay, and the firewall welded.None of the off the shelf full wide body kits really caught my eye, so I decided to mix and match parts from two manufactures to get the look that I was after. The front fenders are Chargespeed vented +25mm. The rear fenders are L'aunsport. Here they are, along with a Chargespeed lip mocked up onto the car.The car sits just about 6 feet wide front and rear and has room for a 12" wide wheel inside the wheel wells.At this point I felt confident about the direction I was taking the car and finished tearing the car down to a bare shell. I spent a lot of time cleaning, degreasing and removing excess seam sealer. It's still not where it needs to be, but it is incredibly tedious work, so I do as much as I can in a sitting. Due to some really poor decision making and workmanship somewhere in the car's history, I also had to remove the roof skin that was on it.Most recently the car was mocked up with a mock up EJ257 and V7 STI 6 speed and sent up to Speedfactory Racing to have the exhaust system built. That is where the car is located right now. Registered users of the site do not see these ads.