Out with the Old: 2003 WRX 360k miles SOLD!!!

The time finally came for Poppi to sell the 2003 WRX to fund the Mustang Sally resurrection project. Dad bought this Suby brand new in 2003 for his 50th birthday. It was his commuter from Tehachapi to Edwards Air Force Base from May 2003 through his retirement in December 2019. The car had over 360k miles on it. 

Here it is on July 9th with the new owner getting ready to head back home to the Central Valley. I helped dad sell it by using Facebook Marketplace. I tried selling my 1999 Civic on FB Marketplace a couple years ago. We had a good amount of interest and we responded to various messages on FB and dad getting texts. We decided to list it for $4800. It sold for $4000 less than 24 hours later. We were pretty satisfied with that value and speed of the sale, especially with the fact that Tehachapi is a good 45 minutes from Bakersfield and kind of in the boonies. I think the buyer was 1.5 hours drive away. 

Here's a pic of the engine bay. The car was well worn on the outside. This comes with the territory of owning a car in the high desert/Mojave desert. The car was parked outside most of its life and spent many a hot day baking in the California desert sun at Edwards AFB. Yikes! 

You can see in the exterior pic above that the clearcoat was struggling to hang on. The car was taken care of and "adult driven" as they say. It did a few drag runs at Famoso early in its life and ran high 13's with some minor intake system mods and a muffler, downpipe and up pipe. It worked great in the occasional Tehachapi mountain snow on the commutes to EAFB. 

Later in its life, it experienced engine damage when mom was driving up the Tehachapi mountain (Highway 58) with some friend in the car, A/C pumping and pinging to death up the hill. Dad rebuilt the engine, but the wrong bearing clearances caused a 2nd rebuild 400miles later. Ouchy! I was able to assist in the reassembly process back in like 2016 or 17 (memory is fading). It ran another like 90k miles or so until it was sold. It had the Mishimoto big Top Mount, "Hechtspeed" intake mods/ram air, exhaust system mods and a 16G turbo and Cobb AccessPort off the shelf Stage 2 (or 3?) tune.

It received hand me down lowering springs and shocks/struts from my 2002 WRX when I bought BC Racing coilovers. It also got Brent's gold painted Rota Grids in 17x9 with some 225/45/17's that were kind of newer. 

Well, we say good bye to one Hechtspeed legend and use those funds to help restore another legend, Mustang Sally. Stay tuned!