On Buying a Dream Car
When I was 19 or 20, Subaru brought its rally team to the Gorge Games. This meant that there were a number of the new 2002 “bug-eye” Impreza WRXs running around Hood River, all in the World Rally Classic Blue (what I think of as Subaru blue):
I … fell in love. This was the first car that I really, truly coveted. A colleague at the restaurant I was working at went out and bought one that summer, and I got to ride around in it when we went shooting. Man, I loved that car. The color. The power. The cool. [Eds note: I stand by my position that the gold wheels are dumb. It’s my only note on the whole car.]
I’ve wanted one ever since. Every time I’ve gone to buy a car, I’ve looked at and test driven and seriously considered a WRX (and later, an STI). Each time, I’ve talked myself out of it. (I don’t always make the BEST financial choices, but when it comes to big things like cars, I’m more pragmatic and practical than y’all might expect.)
See, the thing is, it’s not a great daily driver for a person like me. The hatchback version was pretty small, and once they shifted over fully to the sedan body in 2015, the day-to-day utility dropped off a lot. I wanted a manual transmission, and driving a stick in regular traffic (*cough* Seattle *cough*) or on steep hills (*cough* Hood River *cough*) sucks, even in a car without the short clutch and somewhat temperamental transmission that comes with a turbo Subaru engine.
The first car I helped purchase in 2005 was a ‘98 Subaru Outback Legacy, aka “Serenity”. I was a poor law student, and only could afford a car at all because of help from my parents. A WRX was absolutely NOT an option.
I eventually traded my Outback legacy to my dad for his 2001 Outback, because it was a manual (which I loved and did not like). I never named that car, weirdly enough. I didn’t pick it out, though I loved it dearly until dad blew the headgasket on it.
In 2012, I decided it was time for my first real, adult, grown up car, and I decided I wanted a little bit of luxury. I drove the WRX and was really unimpressed with that generation; it was loud, and uncomfortable, the stereo was bad (and you couldn’t really hear it anyway over the engine), and the fuel economy sucked. This was also the era in which most non-sedan body Subarus looked unfortunately similar to a minivan (no minivan hate; it’s just not what 30 year old Phil was at all interested in). I ended up with a land-yacht 2012 Chrysler 300S aka “Big Government,” as named by my friends, or “Iris” as named by me (it was the first car I had with a voice assistant, which was essentially a terrible, ass-backwards imitation of Apple’s Siri).
After a terrible sprint down the Gorge in a December 2018 rainstorm to see Dad when he wasn’t doing well that left me white-knuckled and required a stop at Andrew’s Pizza for a beer before I could go home, I realized I needed all-wheel drive, particularly with my dad not in great health. I also knew I was going to be getting a golden retriever puppy in March, and I wasn’t keen on trying to manage a large dog in the back of a sedan. There are really two options when it comes to good all-wheel drive for Hood River-type weather: Subaru and Audi. I was used to a luxury car (thanks, Big Government!) and I was really unimpressed with that generation of Subarus (road noise, style, etc.), so I ended up with a used Audi Q5 aka “Denali’s Ride.” [In retrospect, I should have looked at a used high-level trim of the Forester, which fixes most of the road noise and ride issues of Subarus. I helped my folks buy one in 2019, which I’ve driven a lot and REALLY enjoy for a substantially underpowered vehicle.]
In 2022, I got my job with the Foundation and I knew I’d be driving to Seattle a couple days a week for the foreseeable future. The Audi required premium gas, and it was stupidly expensive (like $5-6/gallon). It was time for an electric car. Elon Musk is a jackass and I didn’t want to support him, Subaru didn’t make an electric vehicle at the time (and they sort of still don’t; the Solterra is effectively a Toyota except for the badging), and everyone and their brother was raving about how good the Kia EV6/Ioniq 5 were (and they were right; the EV6 is a great car). I wanted an electric car, so no WRX/STI for Phil (though I took the opportunity to go drive a couple of them just in case).
The EV6 is a great commuter car. It’s comfortable, fuel- and cost-efficient (yay electricity in a state with a lot of hydropower), has a good single-pedal mode for traffic, and is easy to charge at home and at my office. Unfortunately, the way in which it’s fun to drive (read: bat-out-of-hell acceleration) is not the safest or most socially-acceptable way to drive, especially in the I-5 corridor. I like driving, but I started finding it a little frustrating to drive it when 90% of my driving is on I-5, with people using the left lane as a HOV slow lane.
This brings us to 2023. A year in which I made a lot of changes to my life, and a lot of commitments to myself in terms of my health, my priorities, and unabashedly seeking joy where I find it. In May and June, I had a series of conversations with a couple of friends about the fact that I was starting to feel less motivated to keep on my healthy path and that I was looking for something to help keep me focused on maintaining the changes I’d made (a “little treat,” if you will). A good friend of mine had also just bought her dream car; a mostly impractical-in-regular-life-but-super-fun-to-do-Raptor-runs-in Ford F-150 Raptor, and she’d kept her older Honda for daily commuting. Another friend of mine showed up to my house to pick up a bottle of bourbon I’d bought for him in his fun car, a 2019 Subaru WRX STI that he only drives on the weekends (he’s a contractor and been driving a full-sized work pickup every time I’d seen him out in the world). It was … a revelation. It hadn’t really occurred to me, but I am privileged enough to live a life where I can afford to have two reasonable cars to fit my two very different use cases. I don’t need to compromise on one.
So I set myself some goals. If I hit my weight goal,1 some financial goals, and proved to myself that it wouldn’t be a financial issue, I’d get to buy myself a fun car based on some criteria. I set a couple of interim rewards (the half-day Dirtfish Rally class I took in September, a full-day one that I can take at some point). I wrote up a contract with myself, roped my friend Robin into being my accountabili-buddy, and got to work.
And it worked.
There were days I wanted to blow off my diet and bake a cake. Days when I really didn’t want to work out, or wanted to ignore my intermittent fasting and have a bowl of ice cream or a beer at 10:00. But, for the most part, I didn’t do those things. I lived within the framework I’d defined. I stuck with those goals. And two weeks ago Friday, I hit that goal weight. I hit it again this Friday, despite some real temptation in the last week to indulge myself.
So yesterday, I got to go to Subaru of Puyallup, test drive a car that checked all of my mandatory boxes and all but two of my desirable boxes,2 and after a couple of hours of negotiation, paperwork, and detailing, I drove away in my beautiful new (to me) 2021 Subaru WRX STI.
Some details:
2021 Subaru WRX STI Base
Stock condition and with no meaningful damage (which are surprisingly rare; this is a car that encourages owners to make dumb choices, both in terms of modifications and how they drive it).
24,003 miles
Two owners, in Hawaii and Washington (and it’s been in a garage most of the last two years)
Magnetite grey (WRC blue was my preferred color, but 1) they’re often thousands of dollars more, 2) there aren’t any available within 150 miles that aren’t heavily modified), and 3) this may be less likely to stand out to State Patrol Troopers on the freeway).
The only modifications two this car are cosmetic; the prior owner swapped out all the pink external STI badging for yellow. I like the yellow, but I’m thinking about going back to the original pink.
I’ve named her Kaylee, because she’s shiny, slightly unrefined, and hopefully going to teach me a lot about the care and maintenance of high-performance engines. I took her for a shakedown cruise this morning up to Port Gamble for lunch at Baker & Butcher Provisions, and I had a shit-eating grin on my face pretty much the whole time.
So here’s to unbridled joy and making questionable decisions in 2024.
1 Yes, weight is a stupid metric for most people. For me, it is a convenient quick measure of progress, but I also do body mass analysis and track a bunch of other things that I care a lot more about; this is just something I can check in 30 seconds every week and get a macro view of how I’m doing with my diet and my activity level. ↩ 2 No WRC blue, and no sunroof.↩
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