I've been looking for a daily driver/beater car ever since I got the STi even though my original intent was to drive the STi daily. With all the work I've put into it and how nice it's turned out it kills me to think of driving it through the winter again or the possibility of something happening to it. After the door dent incident I knew I couldn't keep taking the car to school either because people can't respect other people's nice things so I really started searching for a car i didn't have to care about. i was looking at spending ~$2000 which while it isn't a huge amount of money it would definitely set me back in my goals a bit. My friends girlfriend told me that her friends boyfriend was selling a 1993 Subaru Impreza for $300 and I figured it would be complete trash but decided to go check it out that night anyhow. While I was at work someone had offered them $400 to keep the car until next week but I figured it still wouldn't hurt to check the car out. When I got there I was surprised at how decent it was and after driving it I knew it would be stupid to pass the car up so I offered them the $300 I had gotten earlier that day with intentions of buying the car for scrap if nothing else and the $67 I had in my wallet and drove the car home.
It's a 1993 Impreza L 1.8L FWD automatic with 160K miles on it. Not pumped about the auto or FWD part but for what I paid I can't complain. It's got some rust but not nearly as bad as I figured it would. It needed a MAF sensor which I picked up from pull-a-part for $25 and grabbed 2 more to sell. It also needs and exhaust but I'll cover that later. Since then I've put over 300 mostly problem free miles on it. All 4 power windows work, the power locks work, the power mirrors work, in fact the only thing that doesn't work is the R12-charged A/C compressor. I already took the belt off of it anyhow, I'm going to maximize the fuel economy I can get in this little car. With the new MAF it still hiccups on part-throttle deceleration but it also still has a TPS code up so I'll have to check into that. My goal with this car is to make it as close to being free as possible as far as the purchase price goes. I'm going to try to get at least $367 for the CF hood I bought for the STi that I ended up not liking which would help offset the cost of the car as well.
Car cost analysis (constantly updating):
$367 - cost of car
$25.91 - cost of new MAF sensor
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392.91 invested into car to make it daily drivable
Here's how it looked when I got it:
I plastidipped the front grille already because I'm original like that:
Since one of the cats was cut out and laying in the back seat when I got the car the exhaust needs some work. Fortunately I kept my stock STi exhast and with some slight modification to the exhaust on the car (stock manifolds are equal length, I'm swapping them for UEL headers) it's going to bolt right up.
It also needs ball joints on both sides up front and I have 2 brand new OEM ones in my garage from the STi's suspension build so those won't cost me anything more either.
I already love this car. I'm going to clean it up some and practice doing some body work on it as well, so I'll post pictures of that when I get around to it. It's a great little car and it's already saving the STi from being beaten up by the awesome roads and weather conditions we have here in Ohio.
