Time for a new project!

This is quite an exciting project (for me anyway). Today I take ownership of my brother’s old car, a car that’s been sitting on my Mum and Dad’s driveway doing absolutely nothing for the past 8 years or so. Nothing wrong with it, just ended up there whilst he bought another car.

For a long time I would either look at it from the window, or walk past it and think ‘That would be so cool to drive it’. So then I just started planning in my head, what would need to be involved in getting a car like this running again, thinking ‘How hard could it be?’.

The car in question? A 2005 Subaru Impreza WRX, in World Rally Blue Pearl.

Now, for those who know me, will know that I’m not really a car person, in the mechanic sense of the word. Far from it actually, I feel much more comfortable with electrical tweaks, mainly relating to car audio. Aside from the usual maintenance tasks that happens under the bonnet, I’ve never touched an engine in my life.

So this project is mainly because I hate seeing a car like this just sitting there slowly dying, also because there’s that little bit of sibling jealousy that he had a car like this and I never have, and also because along the way, I’d like to at least have a go at learning some things that I wouldn’t normally touch on.

Quite a few people who I’ve mentioned my plan of bringing this car back on the road to have advised me to not go anywhere near it, saying things like ‘You’ll never get that car back on the road’, or ‘It’ll cost you far too much money’.

The good news that I’m holding onto about this, is that I’m able to know a fair amount of the history through my brother (who happens to have the entire car’s history to hand, including all of the original sales paperwork… it’s very extensive to be honest).

So whilst I’ve got some reading to do, which I think I’m actually going to enjoy to be honest, now is probably a good time to point out all of the obvious things that I’m aware make this car not in the best condition that it could be.

Most of it is cosmetic, either with the bodywork or paintwork, or the interior. I’m sure nothing that can’t be fixed with a bit of cleaning and maybe some bodyshop professionals though.

I’m slightly more concerned about the amount of mould I found growing on the steering wheel and gear knob. Gear knob is easy, I could just replace that with a new or second hand one from eBay.

I’m less inclined to start disconnecting steering wheels with airbags, so I’m not sure if I’m going to leave that or replace it. I like the steering wheel (the three spoke MOMO style). We’ll see once it’s up and running.

Whilst this car was sitting on the driveway doing nothing, it actually started with no instrument cluster, as my brother had used this as a donor piece for his other WRX (which has now been sold to someone else, so that cluster is long gone).

Took me a while to find a replacement, but I wanted to try my very best to get hold of one that had the same (or at least, as close as possible) mileage that the car has. Thankfully, I managed to find one on eBay that was near enough the correct mileage.

So that’s where I am at the moment, the proud owner of an iconic blue Impreza WRX, and full of excitement and determination to get this back on the road and not off to the scrap heap.

Please follow my journey as I get this car back on the road!