1996 Subaru Impreza WRX V Limited review from UK and Ireland

Nothing at all has gone wrong with it, which isn't bad for an old girl.

When I was sniffing around for a Scooby, I was confronted with the choice of a UK Spec car or a JDM GC8c, and I'll be honest only an idiot is going for the UK spec car, as the first thing all UK car owners do is spend money on more power, why? When a Japanese car is cheaper and comes with the power already.

Mine came with after market exhaust and air filter, most Japanese ones do, the rolling road had it at 292bhp, which in a car weighing just 1280kg is plenty of horses to play with.

However there is transmission loss due to the nature of 4wd, meaning in a 60-100mph roll it'll take around 9 seconds give or take a 1/100th of a second.

Fast sure, from a standstill it'll kill 99% of cars on the road, but given the fuel economy not fast enough from a rolling start IMO.

So I spent £40 manual on a manual boost controller and upped boost to 1.05 kpa/bar, best £40 I've ever spent, brought the 60-100mph time down to 7.54 seconds, which when combined with a sub 5 second 0-60 time means it'll hit 100mph in under 13 seconds.

Under 13 seconds may not be supercar fast, but it's enough to beat almost any sub £30k car to 100mph, even the new Butt Ugly WRX STi.

Subaru don't built them like they used to.