Final Drive: 2002 Subaru WRX SportWagon

Review and photos by Brendan McAleer

Looking through some old college photos the other day, I came across a group shot where I’m wearing a Sector 9 longboarding t-shirt. I thought to myself, “That man is now considerably fatter, but I still have that shirt hanging in my closet – it even gets worn periodically.” I flipped over the photo to check the date. 1998. Whoa.

2002 Subaru WRX SportWagon. Click image to enlarge

And that’s the kind of guy I am. I bought my house not to fix up and flip, but to live in. I knew I was going to marry my wife in a few months of dating her. I buy new clothes out of necessity only and then wear the same jeans all week until aforementioned (and somewhat long-suffering) wife forces me to do laundry.

It should therefore come as no surprise that I’m also a one-car man. When it comes to automobiles I play for keeps. So while I have the good fortune to drive all sorts of interesting metal from week to week, it’s always a relief to climb back into the comfortable, cosseting seats of my faithful old Subaru. Which as it happens, is currently a bit broken.

Previous Final Drive articles have been fond farewells, eulogies to a favourite machine that is either destined to run no more or passing into the hands of a new owner. This one’s a bit different because I have no real intention of getting rid of my WRX anytime soon – I can’t see why I would. It took me forever to get it just right.

I’d like to think some conscientious Japanese line worker took a little extra care bolting things together when she was built. The car left the factory floor as one of the last such machines to arrive in the inaugural North American year for the WRX, and sailed across the Pacific to Vancouver Island. There, in July of 2002, it was purchased by a dentist and spent a quiet, happy, first few years puttering around the winding roads of BC’s capital city.

2002 Subaru WRX SportWagon. Click image to enlarge

If you’re considering buying a WRX yourself, there are a few things to know about these early cars. While largely well-assembled, 2002 models have been known to have colossal transmission failures, and an abusive driver can quickly bring a car to the brink of implosion. They’re also a bit fussy about carefully managing tire wear, and differentials can be expensive to replace.

Factory fresh, both sedan and wagon versions of the WRX made 227 hp and, with the much-vaunted Subaru Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive, were capable of scampering to 100 km/h in the high five-second range. This was stupendously quick for the day, faster than most of the BMW or Audi range (apart from the M and S cars) and was certainly something that Subaru’s PR department shouted about a lot. You may remember the ads, with quick cuts of a fast-shifting Subie snorting along a winding mountain road, then a sudden slo-mo freeze frame while the voiceover says, “That’s the beauty of Subaru All-Wheel Drive.”

Ooh, I wanted one back then. The cravings got worse when I attended a local eighth-mile drag race and lined up my moderately tuned Mazda MX-6 GT against a WRX wagon belonging to a friend. Having recently run dead-even with an engine-swapped Acura Integra, I was pretty confident. The MX-6 was still spinning its front tires as the Subaru hopped off the line and simply blew my doors off.

2002 Subaru WRX SportWagon. Click image to enlarge

Part of the Subaru’s charm is that it’s, well, a Subaru. My wife is something of an eco-nut, and didn’t even get her driver’s license until she was in her early 20s. She doesn’t really care about cars, preferring cycling, transit or walking, and requires that they be practical tools that can haul stuff safely. How about a four-door wagon? “Okay. What’s that scoopy-thing sticking out of the hood?” Um. Never mind that. Four-door wagon. Look, the seats fold down and everything.

I really wanted a blue one – Subaru’s World Rally Blue is most famously associated with their World Rally Championship (WRC) Team (well, duh). So when I began looking at the used market, I at first ignored the WRX I ended up buying. Silver was, I thought, a bit boring. I found a blue one on autoTRADER.ca and went to take a look.

Pre-purchase mechanical inspections are a good idea when buying used. More important than that? Trusting your gut. I wouldn’t buy a car from anyone I wouldn’t let hold my kid, and the bleary-eyed surfer dude who showed me around his medium-condition Subaru – broken side-mirror, tear in the seat bolster, scratches on the rear – was a few gears short of a five-speed. Pass.

2002 Subaru WRX SportWagon. Click image to enlarge

The guy driving the silver car, on the other hand, was a bit of a perfectionist. He was fussy, and the tiniest bit difficult to deal with when negotiating. Perfect.

And so, she was mine, and it was time to begin the tinkering. It’s fine to buy your cars off-the-rack and keep them in factory trim, but I’ve always had the modification bug, ever since I figured out that more boost = more fun. For the Subaru, I’d set aside funds for some professional automotive tailoring, and off the car went to Subaru experts Rocket Rally, in Squamish, BC. These guys both build privateer rally specials and are in charge of Subaru Canada’s rally team, and they know their stuff.

Pat Richard, expert tuner and a phenomenally talented driver to boot, fiddled with my car’s programming as it sat on a four-wheel dyno machine, hooked up to fans, cords and monitors like a patient in intensive care. He would do so on a further two occasions as I added things to the car.

The result? An extra 60 hp and a totally different driving experience, practically free of turbo-lag. Beefed up sway bars and end-links were also fitted, as was a freer-flowing exhaust that kept the factory muffler for a bit more stealth, and I put in a rear-mounted strut brace with quick-release linkage so that cargo-hauling wasn’t compromised.

2002 Subaru WRX SportWagon. Click image to enlarge

While many more tweaks would be added over the years, this was probably the best bang-for-buck upgrade the car ever received. It cornered flat, scooted off the line with aplomb, and still had a reasonably comfortable ride. I took it to track days, we hurtled along mile after mile of gravel in a late-afternoon sunshine in the hunt for hot springs North of Pemberton, we loaded it up with gear and drove 7,000 km on a side-road-centred round-trip to Los Angeles without spending more than ten minutes on the I-5.

As I’d hoped, my wife fell in love with the thing too. She dubbed it “Roary,” for the sound of the offbeat rumble that unequal headers give a flat-four engine: wub-wub-wub-wub-wubwubwubrrrrrrMMMMMMM!

And so, Roary became a sort of Swiss Army Knife for the road, hauling paddle-boards and bikes, crammed full of thrift-shop find furniture, covered in mud from fording a mucky creek bed. I kept adding stuff.

2002 Subaru WRX SportWagon. Click image to enlarge

As she now sits, my – our – WRX is running the turbocharger off an Australian-market STi and making somewhere around 330 hp, which it does in a furious surge, air whooshing through the large-bore intake like the sound of Zeus trying to finish the last of a White Spot milkshake. It’s lowered on adjustable Koni struts paired with progressive springs that provide only a mild drop, and I’ve gone through the rest of the chassis adding braces, polyurethane bushings and other suspension tweaks. I bought a set of BBS wheels from a 2004 STi (these are the only year that will fit as the WRX has a different bolt-pattern than its more powerful cousin) and painted them myself. They look okay – from about fifteen feet away.

Other little details include an aluminum skid-plate to prevent oil-pan damage, a brace for the brake cylinder and braided hydraulic lines to firm up pedal feel, and a lighter-weight accessory pulley to make zinging the engine in heel-and-toe shifting easier. The exhaust is now an appropriately named MadDad Whisper, which burbles contentedly under light throttle but rises to an outraged howl above 4,000 rpm – like it has just trodden on Lego in bare feet.

2002 Subaru WRX SportWagon. Click image to enlarge

The effects of age have had their toll as well. Suffering from oil starvation in a long sweeper, I spun a bearing and had to have the engine rebuilt – an expensive repair and an Achilles’ heel I’ve remedied with a new oil-pickup and oil pan. The dash-mounted clock has stopped working for the fifth time, and there are so many interior rattles, it sounds like a mariachi band is trying to escape from the dashboard. The clutch chatters when cold. The cupholders suck. Everything’s covered in cat-hair. The A/C’s on the fritz again.

Most troublesome, the radiator’s just developed a hairline crack in the plastic end tank – I hate these things, one of the worst items in a modern car for longevity is the plastic-and-aluminum radiator. Not to worry, my M.O. when something breaks is to upgrade the part with something better – a Mishimoto all-aluminum radiator in this case.

When my daughter was just a few months old, she was having trouble sleeping at night. After what seemed like hours of wailing, I loaded her into her car seat, carried her out to the WRX and set off – it was something like one o’clock in the morning.

Off we went into the night and slowly, gradually, she began to calm down. The warm fall air swirled around the cabin, mixing with the soothing throb of the boxer-four. She still wailed every time we came to a stop at an intersection, but soon even that faded. She slept, and I, relieved, drove onwards, circling endlessly.

This whole business of automobiles possessing a soul or character is all a bit silly. They’re machines, after all, devices to help us go from A to B in sure, swift comfort, and maybe with a little bit of fun along the way as well.

But the experiences I’ve shared in and around (and underneath) my car have made it something more. It’s packed with memories, tweaked and moulded until it fits like a favourite leather jacket, musty with the smell of busy lives, sitting out in the driveway looking happy with those idiotic googly headlights.

Like a well-worn pet, it’s a part of the family. And you know what they say: family is forever.
Now, I wish that dratted radiator would hurry up and arrive already. I want to go for a drive.