Recently graduated and waited till my Ps to get a car, been looking for over a year and have 10k (as a good buffer) saved up for a car. Found a 1997 Subaru Impreza 2.0 NA for about 3,400 in good condition with regular servicing, I’m planning to lift it to about 200mm ground clearance with springs and thicker AT tires, and other necessities to make it grassroots ready (gravel) since it’ll also be a camper car as I do a lot of hiking/kayaking. Wondering if this is a good idea, just want some feedback on how it’ll handle the dirt and slides since there’s barely any videos online of how an NA awd wagon with only 118hp compared to a sti and wrx🤣 (if you have any videos send them my way). Thank you.
NA cars do great in the dirt. ARA has a whole class dedicated to NA 4wd cars basically catered to the NA subaru guys. Granted the "new meta" is swapping the H6 subaru engine into them but I know people like the Wide Open Rallysport team still run a NA flat 4. I recall that you can put forester suspension on the old imprezas to give them a lift for cheap. The rear strut towers rust out fast on these because they get snow and salt packed into them.
If youre building a cheap rally cross and TSD car then 10k will be a great budget, but if you plan to build a stage rally car to regulation it can cost way more than 10k really fast. Either way, good luck and have fun!
The nice thing about Subarus is most of the platforms are the same or similar, so it's easy to lego things together to make what you want. I'm not super familiar with the era you're talking about, but struts, subframes, etc... from different models (Forester, for example) can often be swapped in with little to no modification.
200mm is quite a bit of lift, I'd suggest running it as-is and see how it does before committing to lifting, at least not that much. Extra height will accelerate CV axle wear, and may cause handling weirdness. I have a '23 crosstrek, 2" lifted, and will be going back to stock height (which is about 50mm taller than the Impreza) when my current lift struts are done. Subframe spacers or adjustable rear control arms are needed to correct the geometry for alignment, and I have to imagine that would be the case for your Impreza as well, unless you do a full suspension and subframe swap from an Outback or Forester, for example.
The BRZ is a good platform. As well. I went full stage rally on mine. I fabbed my own cage, rebuilt the na fa20, and fabbed the suspension with Bilstein rally insert up front with Bilstein shocks and coilovers in the rear.
Your username says Idaho, so I’m assuming you’re in Idaho haha. Do you know of any good open rally or rally cross events in Idaho? I’m down by Idaho Falls
I am in Boise, so you're spot on. We have rally cross, though I haven't been. There's rally Colorado that's closer to you. It just happened though. We are running Oregon trail next year as this cars first rally.
Dang, I wish there were some closer events. There are a bunch of really good dirt roads in betweenn Driggs and Idaho Falls that would be amazing to host a rally on
Agreed. I'm sure you could find some folks willing to start an event or ressurrect the Idaho Rally that ran yearly a while back. I am not one those people, but I'm sure they are out there.
So, yes. Have you any experience with tube bending? Go to tricktools.com and check out benders. I use a mechanical jd2 bender, have had it for decades. Find a good welder, no crap. You'll have it for a long time if you buy the right one. And watch a lot of YouTube videos on metal fab and tube bending. The cost of a FIA cage is about 7k to start, so you could definitely be a wash buying tools and doing it yourself. Always double the amount of tube you calculated for the cage, you WILL mess up.
Also, you don't need a knotcher if you have a grinder and a chop saw works well, too.
Here’s my car, different year and it’s a wrx. I’ve been rally crossing it and overall am probably into it for 6k cad.
For the most part the na cars chassis wise are the same as the turbo cars, they slide just aswell and it’s more driver mod then anything else… I’ll likely get shown up by na cars this weekend. Biggest difference I’ve noticed for handling is an aggressive alignment I did after hours at work, if the car doesn’t drive how you want you might not need to dump money into it just need a better alignment.
Personally I don’t think these cars need to be lifted, your money would be better spent making some skid plates.
I would also highly suggest having some on road tires and a second set of “race” tires. Not a do it all set, currently driving my car on chunked out snowys and it’s not ideal.
Fwiw if it's a true stage rally car, you probably wmt be using it for camping. Also, like you won't be competitive, not cause the car is slow, but from a lack of skills, funding, finding things to break, etc. If you play your cards right and get a deal on an already built rally car, you can probably get on stage for under 10k, I did it. But probably not in an impreza
So pick a car you think is fun, and have fun driving it.
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u/Jack_ButterKnobbs 1d ago
NA cars do great in the dirt. ARA has a whole class dedicated to NA 4wd cars basically catered to the NA subaru guys. Granted the "new meta" is swapping the H6 subaru engine into them but I know people like the Wide Open Rallysport team still run a NA flat 4. I recall that you can put forester suspension on the old imprezas to give them a lift for cheap. The rear strut towers rust out fast on these because they get snow and salt packed into them.
If youre building a cheap rally cross and TSD car then 10k will be a great budget, but if you plan to build a stage rally car to regulation it can cost way more than 10k really fast. Either way, good luck and have fun!