Subaru WRX STI (GD)
Why 6.0: The everyman's rally car, driven year-round in places sports cars hibernate. Clean unmodified examples got collector money; the rest are still being driven as intended — hard.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
The EJ257's unequal-length headers give the GD the same off-beat boxer warble the 22B made famous, plus audible spool and blow-off. But this is the mass-market version of that noise, and the turbo flattens everything above 4,000 rpm. Just below the car it imitates.
4-cylinder · turbocharged · 7,000 rpm redline · rated 6.3 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €26k (2005) → €39k (2026), trending up · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
A BeSafe/Stokke ISOFIX vehicle-compatibility list codes the contemporaneous Subaru Impreza (2002, same GD-chassis generation as WRX STI GD) as ISOFIX positions "2,4" — the two rear outboard seats only.
Owner's manual warns never to use a rearward-facing seat on an active-airbag-protected seat; no ISOFIX anchor bars are documented for the front passenger position.
Sourced via the base Impreza GD platform the WRX STI shares, not a WRX STI-badge-specific listing.
BeSafe iZi Go ISOFIX car list (Subaru Impreza 2002: positions 2,4); Subaru WRX-STI owner's manual (ManualsLib) for the airbag warning language (owner-community sourced, not manufacturer documentation)
The long version
This is the sports car that shows up at the grocery store in a snowstorm, because AWD and a rally pedigree mean bad weather is a feature, not a reason to park it. Modified, tracked, rallycrossed examples make up most of the surviving population, worn down by owners who bought it to abuse it, while the handful of clean, unmolested originals have quietly become the collector tier commanding real money. Prices bottomed in the early 2010s and have climbed steadily since, but that's mostly the unmolested cars pulling the average up — the daily-driven majority is still priced like a used car.