Dave's stars aligned when his local Subaru dealer informed him that they had a Rally Blue Pearl GC8 ... WRX and picked up the '98 rolling chassis and began researching the challenging JDM STI ...

Imported stateside in November 2021 by the selling dealer, the car had its 53C Blue ... the GC8 in the featured video makes those overly beautiful noises you’d expect an early WRX STI to produce.

Enter the 1997 Subaru Impreza WRX STI owned by Peter, which is a mix of GC8 WRX STI and GDA WRX. As with every Impreza WRX and WRX STI, this fellow uses a four-cylinder turbocharged boxer.

There aren’t many blues I’d pick over Subaru’s famous “WR Blue Pearl” but this “Hyper Blue” is one of the few. This exterior is exactly how I’d spec out a WRX STI, black wheels ...

Now, at the Detroit show, Subaru has unveiled the WRX STI, and we must say, it's an improvement. The launch edition, shown, get a standard short throw shifter, a huge wing, WR Blue paint ...

While it wears the iconic blue-and-yellow 555 ... If first, is the 2021 WRX STI, which posts an average lap time of 1:45.7 over four laps. The 1997 Impreza GC8 is next, and while its straight ...

WRX STI The Series.HyperBlue, released for the 2016 model year, is easy to tell apart from the standard STI, thanks to its screaming blue paint. Only 700 of these special-edition models made it to ...