Here at Modified, we tend to stick to a pretty strict mantra: Performance above all else. If it goes fast, we want to know more about it. We see a lot of cool turbo AWD cars in our line of work, and after a while they can all begin to blend together. But every now and then we come across something a little different — something that sticks with us.
When Scott Molitor first contacted us months ago with a few pictures of his STI-powered Impreza 2.5 RS, we were immediately interested in learning more about what brought him to build this unique (and very cool) Subaru.
“I got into cars at a very young age,” Scott says. “My hobby started with Hot Wheels and grew from there; my dad used to repair smashed cars in our garage as a second form of income. I remember a FC3S RX-7 that really struck me as cool. Growing up in a small town in Minnesota didn’t really expose me to many cool cars, but my dad did a good job of showing me brands other than typical American models. My dad loved his Hondas, so my first car was a ’91 Honda Accord EX. I started with the typical mid-’90s mods: intake, exhaust wheels, et cetera.”
As Scott grew older, he fell out of the car scene and momentarily shifted toward another motorized hobby. “Our family moved to Colorado, and I got into motocross,” Scott says. “By 2001 I was doing a few amateur Moto X races here and there, but I kept getting hurt. My mom finally presented me with an ultimatum: move out or stop riding, so I stopped riding!” Scott says with a laugh. It was at this point that Scott began to reevaluate his motoring life. With a longtime love for off-road rally cars, Scott began to search for his first dream car, the Mitsubishi Gallant VR-4. A bit of a black sheep, admittedly, but that wouldn’t stop Scott.
“I actually wanted [a VR-4] when I was younger, but had trouble finding one,” Scott says. “I eventually found a great VR-4; I loved how the feel of boost felt like the powerband of a two-stroke dirt bike. At that same time, my good friend, Levi Woods, was building a 2.2 Subaru Impreza and doing some rallycross events, so I joined him. We both poured money into our cars, as you typically do with racing — his car ran flawlessly (being NA, he never had issues), but I was running into the typical Mitsubishi problems and began looking into the Subaru brand for assurance.” >>
Scott picked up his first Subaru shortly thereafter, but he was never much for keeping cars around longer than he needed to. After owning a wide variety of other cars (Nissan, Honda and even a turbocharged Geo Tracker) Scott found himself back at square one, looking for a GC8 Impreza 2.5 RS, the one Subaru he had always liked best.
“The ’00 Subaru 2.5 RS was always my favorite body style,” Scott says. “In Colorado it’s hard to find a reasonably priced example, but, eventually, I did. I drove the car NA for a while, but after a few months I couldn’t take the anguish of no power.”