What a real WR car!
The Rally Fan Meeting was held in October 2023 at the Fuji Speedway CG Park P2 parking lot. The event attracted many rally-inspired cars, some of which had “real” owners participating. We spoke with Mr. “GC8kai,” the owner of a Subaru “Impreza GC8,” a machine that stands out from the other Subaru Impreza GC8s.
He also set up a donor GCB
From a distance, we thought, “Is this a limited edition Impreza 22B?” However, upon closer inspection, I noticed that it was a left-hand drive and had a different aura. We became curious and asked Mr. “GC8kai” about it, and were surprised to hear that it was a real WR car.
“I have owned three 22Bs, but when I saw a WR car that an acquaintance had acquired, I thought, ‘I want one! The 22B also has a wide body, but the real WR car has a different fender shape. When I saw this, I couldn’t wait to have one.”
This is how he set his goal to make a real WR car his favorite car. With the help of an inspired acquaintance, he found one overseas and brought it to Japan, where it came to him in the form of a 1998 S5 model. He also prepared a regular GCB as a donor to obtain a license plate number and drive it on public roads and carried out various tasks to obtain vehicle inspections.
Authentic parts whenever possible
It took about 6 years to get the license plate number, but they successfully obtained it and drove themselves to the event. Due to gas inspections and to comply with various vehicle inspections, the engine and transmission bodies are from a GDB or GC8. The knuckles, drive shafts, propeller shafts, and other parts were one-off items.
But Mr. “GC8kai” insisted on using authentic WR car parts whenever possible. Starting with the turbine and intercooler, real battle parts can be seen in the engine compartment. AP Racing calipers peeking out from under the legs are also authentic, and are water-cooled calipers. This is one of the parts that remind us that real battle parts are different from aftermarket parts.
Faithful reproduction of the meter design
The attention to detail is naturally evident in the interior. The most important of these is the sidebar cover. This sidebar cover is made of carbon and has logo stickers of various parts makers, but it is said to be unique to the S5.
The interior also has a lot of authentic parts, but his special point is the gauges. Although these gauges are not the real thing, they make full use of one of the functions of the fully-controlled MOTEC system, which allows you to freely create your meter design. The meter design is faithfully reproduced based on images of real WR car meters.
I would think that if he had made a real WR car into a public road spec based on a real WR car, there would be nothing more to do, but that’s Mr. “GC8kai”, who not only admires a real WR car, but has acquired one and made it his car. He says he still has more to do.
“I want to make it more like a real racing machine. Right now I am using the stock GC8 transmission, but in the future, I would like to install a sequential dog transmission to make it more like a real-world machine.”
He has not yet stopped that evolution. I am sure that he will continue to build it to a point where ordinary people would not understand it.
