Pour one out for the ‘bugeye’, as this Redline Rebuild episode isn’t so much a rebuild as a rapid deconstruction.
The five-door Impreza WRX was condemned some time ago. Up on the ramps in an earlier episode, the team decided that while its engine was worth rebuilding, the harsh northeastern US winters had replaced a little too much of the Subaru ‘world rally blue mica’ paintwork to a less fetching shade of iron oxide.
It was beyond economical repair underneath too, and that structural compromise was the real problem. So while the engine has recently been freshened up ready to be rebuilt, the shell needs to go. And rather than part it out and have a blue paperweight hanging around out the back of the workshop forever, the simplest, perhaps most humane way, is to crush it.
It’s an ignominious end, and one that’s a little hard to watch if, like us, you enjoyed watching similar cars tear around the world’s rally stages a couple of decades ago. Not that we never saw those getting destroyed of course – in fact, Petter Solberg’s crash at Rally Germany in 2004 resulted in something not unlike what you see here.
At the same time, we should take a moment to admire the finesse of the crane operator, who clearly knows exactly how to pick up the car(cass) and lie it down again in order to crush just the right bits, and that sweeping-up move at the end with the iron girder is genuinely impressive.
We’re still yet to see where the Subaru’s engine is actually going, but suffice to say things will be back to normal from the next episode. You can see all the previous Redline Rebuilds here, or head over to the Hagerty YouTube channel for your fill of motoring videos.
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