Subaru Impreza WRX STI (GC8)
Why 5.3: The original homologation STI, three WRC titles deep before Subaru ever sold one in America. Import buyers are chasing the same EJ20/DCCD recipe the GD car inherited, at a fraction of the 22B's price.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
The unequal-length headers are here too, so the EJ20 has the same off-beat boxer rumble the 22B is known for, plus a rally-spec spool. It is capped by a stock exhaust that muffles it and a turbo that flattens the top end. Just short of the 22B itself.
4-cylinder · turbocharged · 7,000 rpm redline · rated 6.2 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €9k (2005) → €37k (2026), trending up · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
Subaru owner communities (ScoobyNet, IWSTI, Type-RA) are consistent: classic GC8-era cars don't support ISOFIX and can't be retrofitted for it.
No ISOFIX on the classic GC8 — Subaru owner communities are consistent that this generation doesn't support it.
Subaru owner forums (ScoobyNet/IWSTI/Type-RA) — GC8-era classics confirmed to lack ISOFIX, no retrofit possible (owner-community sourced, not manufacturer documentation)
The long version
This is the STI that actually built the reputation, homologated for a WRC campaign that won three consecutive manufacturers titles while American buyers watched from outside a market Subaru never opened to them. The 25-year import rule has only recently made that history buyable here, and the buyers arriving now skew toward people who already know the EJ20 and DCCD center diff from the later US-market STI and specifically wanted the harder-edged original. Values have climbed as import eligibility widened, but nowhere near what the numbered 22B commands, since this was the volume car underneath the halo edition, not the trophy itself.