Brendan first got in to cars when he was in high school in Fairfax, Virginia. He founded and headed up his high school’s car club while he was there, while rebuilding his first car he bought when he was 16, a 1966 Mustang with the 289 V-8, automatic transmission, and vinyl top.
After slowly restoring the Mustang, Brendan realized that he wanted a car he could modify to his own liking. He wanted a car which he could build with more of a performance goal in mind, as well as personalize. He realized quickly that his numbers-matching Mustang was not the right car to be cut up and modified, and it was sold to a good home in order to fund the next build.
He bounced around several ideas for a new project, including everything from a 240SX convertible to a Porsche 944 Turbo. At the time, a friend of Brendan’s had just gotten a 2002 WRX, and the utility of the all-wheel-drive and four doors caught Brendan’s attention. They had everything he wanted except for the looks.
This brought his attention to the older Impreza’s. He had always liked the RS model’s looks, but until he met a guy named Steve, who had an older JDM STi engine swap in his 4 door 2000 2.5RS Impreza, he had not really known Subaru’s well enough to know this swap was possible. Research began for a GC swap project, and the more he learned, the more he liked.
Soon thereafter a JDM Version 3 RA front clip landed at the local performance shop, and plans were drawn up for a full Right Hand Drive dash swap and motor swap in to an old Impreza sedan. With how much was being swapped, Brendan figured out that the startup costs for an Impreza L would be much less than for a newer RS, and all that would have been used from the RS would have been the door panels and front end exterior panels. A white L was purchased and gutted to a rolling chassis to prepare for the firewalls to be switched, and the project stalled.
After a change in ownership of the shop and some personal financial issues, the car sat until early 2005. At that point, the version 3 clip was sold, and the chassis was driven up to East Coast Swappers in Massachusetts in preparation for one of their earliest WRX dash swaps into the GC chassis, and the first swap with Auto Climate Control, since the donor car would be a 2005 WRX Premium which had been flipped onto the roof, but was otherwise undamaged. Everything possible from the WRX was used, from the engine, to the gas tank, to the brakes and suspension components.
After ECS built the wiring harness and modified the dash to fit, Brendan continued to order pieces for the car and modify others to make the tan Impreza L interior match the dark grey dash, the door panels clear the new dash, and the new 2001 RS front end match the rest of the car. As time went on owning this car, Brendan began to realize that it was not as complete and OEM-fresh as he would have liked, and there were many fundamental things he would change about it if he were to do it again. He wanted the car to be fast and different, but not a beater. He missed his power door locks and windows that his daily driver accord had, and also desired for the car to have a more completed feel to it.
Before any plans for a rebuild could be made, the decision was made for him. The white car was hit and totaled in March of 08. After realizing his custom built Impreza was not insured as well as his agent had told him it was, he fought with the insurance adjusters until the end of July to get as close a settlement as possible to the value of the car, to allow him to rebuild another car. In early August, he got the wrecked white car and his check, and new plans began to be laid.
Success! The entire drivetrain, suspension, and subframes of the old white car (and well, the WRX before that!) were still good, and still had less than 20k miles on them. To save money on labor, he decided to do the entire rebuild himself in his garage. Everything would need to come out of the white car and onto a new unibody chassis, as well as an ever growing list of things that bothered him about the old swap which needed to be fixed.
So, in a two car garage, he slowly stripped the white car to the shell, stripped the new red 95’ L Sedan chassis to the same point, and painted it. The color was unorthodox matte khaki beige, which he was prepared for people to hate much more than they did. He also bedlined the entire non-visible portions of the unibody, including the wheel wells, floor pans, engine bay, etc for durability.
He then began building the new car, with every piece receiving attention as it went back on. Attention to detail is Brendan’s calling card, and for example, his door jams are undercoated black all the way up to the khaki which is the visible outer portion of the car. The bottoms of the trunklid and hood are black. The inside of his hoodscoop is black. His 2.5RS sedan door panels have been dyed to match the black interior, and blue suede inserts replace the stock checkerboard pattern to match his STi seats. Power door locks, one-touch windows, and other modern amenities were added to the swap, along with an alarm to control all of it and keep the car from getting stolen. Also, the car was insured with Hagerty collector’s car insurance to avoid the headache of normal insurance on a modified vehicle.
His original goal was to have the car finished sometime in November. The car rolled out to its first show mid way through April of 09’, after about 1000 hours of work.
Shortly after that, Brendan was brought on board here at Flatirons Tuning and is always available to answer any questions you have!
