Topgear last night.... Subaru itch?

[Lydiam]

Anybody watch topgear last night?

Who started looking through the classifieds for a Subaru?

For me there are certain cars which start a trend: X5 E53 for SUVs, Subaru's for road rally performance....... which cars do you think started a trend?

[Greydog]

We still own our Subaru, not an Impreza it's an Outback 3.0 RN with Perrin engine upgrade. It was brought new in 2004 to replace my wife's V70 T5. The engine was upgraded in 2006 simply the most reliable car among the many we have owned biggest fail the drivers heated seat. Mechanically pretty much bullet proof and with the engine upgrade devastatingly quick when you want to be.

[Leslie]

Didn't see it yet but there used to be 1000's of wrx imports over here in NI , The sound of them was fantastic but high fuel prices,high insurance prices crash damage and many being turned into rally cars has removed most of them to the scrap heap now like many iconic cars before them . I'm sure many went to the classified after to see how much one was nowadays

I was round at a mates garage where he was fixing a rally subara last year that had hit a tree head on about 100 mph , it crumpled the floor right to the spare wheel wheel in the boot with the force of the crash ,luckily it had a massive weld in cage which didn't budge at all , he jigged it and put a complete floor and front end complete with bulkhead of another car on it ,all one piece so it could live again
Just like I look at m3's every now and then and say how much for what is an old car e46/e92 and had hoped they would be cheaper lol You could get a standard 335d which would be near as quick as an m3 for 4 grand but a v8 m3 is still 15k ,doesn't really make sense does it !!!!!!!!

I bought an old 205 gti 1.9 to restore, a true icon of the 90's but its not making much progress of late

[Lydiam]

What is the aim with the 205? Full restoration?

After passing my driving test in 98, my first car was a Renault 5 GT Turbo, pearlescent white, red interior. How I wish I would have kept that car and the Escort RS Turbo S1...... hindsight is a wonderful thing.

[Leslie]

Hi lydiam ,The R5 sounds amazing ! and an s1 was a great car would love one .
The original idea was to get it going and test it and drive it for a bit , then a full repaint later as it was stripped down by the last owner who then abandoned it and it lay in a shed for 10 years . It was a right bugger to get going as all the wiring was off and a good few bits were lost and unfortunately when i did the engine ran good after a bit of tuning but the rear of the block had a big crack in it so needed another block (they are all aluminium and this is common I found out) This changed it into more of a resto than I had planned !
I did the relatively small amount of welding needed, most of it was due to careless jacking bending stuff underneath as these were galvanised and didn't rust anywhere near as bad as everything else that age and it would need a good few storage dents removing before paint .
I did restore a mk1 xr2 10 years ago to near concours condition but then you have to be very careful where you park it etc ,seen too many big budget restos's where the owner is then afarid to drive it and its just sits under a cover . shame really !
We all wish we had kept the many old cars we had lol , I sold my first xr2 near 25 years ago but just found out recently after searching years that it never made it I had 2 Vauxhall calibra's and hanker after another too but I can't buy or store then all !!!!! The 80's cars are just so raw and basic and fun to drive and still use less fuel than the x5 ! No power steering , electric windows and only 4 gears