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Hi All,
I've been lurking on Back Roads for some time and have been meaning to set up a project thread for a while. I have been building a 1997/98 Prodrive WRC S5 Replica since 2009 out of a V6 STI Type R Impreza. A wee taster of the car as how it stand at the minute...
IMG_9551 by Jamie Flett, on Flickr
IMG_1648 by Jamie Flett, on Flickr
This has been a bit of a slow burn this build, as my day job and a young family make finding the time to work on this near impossible. Certain financial limitations have slowed it too along the way. It's been fun to date... painful too with long spells of down-time due to other commitments... a close encounter with the car tipping off its axle stands... two cases of severe arc eye... and the odd trip to the A&E.
I'm going to starting posting as much of the content about the build that I have documented on another forum whenever I can. Please bear with me as there is a lot of it.
It all began when I bought my V6 Type R back in 2004. I had a deposit on a 00 Type R with 18k kilometers on it when the seller disappeared with a substantial deposit and left me high & dry. The unfortunate thing was I had sold my then current daily GT555 Impreza Turbo to fund it and was car-less but hell bent on buying a Type R. Back in 04 in Ireland these were not the most common car and when one came up for sale up in Antrim I jumped at the opportunity and bought it. This may have been a slightly emotional & rushed decision, as I do pride myself for being good at spotting accident damage but the car I'd bought, began to give me trouble a few months down the road and it was then I discovered that the previous owner had crashed the car (DS front) and 'failed' to tell me.
The damage wasn't that bad... but I was never truly happy that the car would be 100% unless I took on substantial repair work. It had been repaired... but not to a standard I would have liked. On later inspection I discovered they had pulled the DS leg back into position which had weakened it and therefore the only thing for me to do was strip the front and replace the leg. It was at about this time that financially running a Type R as a daily driver was proving quite expensive so until I could decide what to do with the accident damage that needed tidying, I choose to take it off the road.
This is when it all went awry. I got the hair-brained idea that I should build a 22B rep. I spent nearly 2 years planning this with several trips to the UK looking at different kits. At the time a lad called Phil Chapman was doing very tasty Carbon 22B kits... but they were very pricey... but I was still keen to go that route.
Soon after meeting Phil I saw a white S5 WRC replica on RCM's (Roger Clark Motorsports) 'Cars For Sale' section. It was a customers car that had been given to Prodrive when new and converted using genuine Prodrive steel 1/4 panels, sills & Fr wings. Soon after I saw it Olly & Matt made the decision to use it as the basis as the Gobstopper 1. I was hooked though. No matter how sexy the 22B is... a WRC arched car was just 10 times better looking. Numerous phone calls to Prodrive to get them to reproduce the steel panels were to no avail.. they had stopped supporting the early cars and me nagging them wasn't going to change that. They did kindly put me in touch with Rodney in WRC Spares though. And the rest is history. I spent another year stripping the car and selling parts not required, so as to fund the new carbon/kevlar panels.
I was very naive when I began this... I've learned a massive amount along the way which I'll happily share... but I never thought the build would end up being to the extent it now is. The initial idea was to build a WRC replica that would be identical externally. Along the way... like a lot of good projects... it grew legs and got out of control. I planned to fit the rear quarter & sills... bolt on some front wings and two new bumpers... fit some spacers to widen the track... and hey presto... jobs a good un.
But I've learned so much along the way and realized that each problem once solved would create another. I also made the insane decision to fully strip the shell and go the caged, bare interior route.
11 years working in a tough job... and a love of design and cars forced me to make the decision a couple of years ago to quit my job and make this 'build' my business. I've been designing and fabricating so many bespoke parts along the way for this which gave me the confidence to go out on my own and start producing my own parts. From basic thermal spacers, to FIA allow fire walls & now full S5 Carbon WRC panels for the 1997/98 Prodrive Impreza rally cars. It's made something I've been passionate about for years and turned it into a a job!
So that's how it all came about. I'll start to fill in the gaps from the start to where I'm at now, over the next while. Thanks for looking.
J.
I've been lurking on Back Roads for some time and have been meaning to set up a project thread for a while. I have been building a 1997/98 Prodrive WRC S5 Replica since 2009 out of a V6 STI Type R Impreza. A wee taster of the car as how it stand at the minute...
IMG_9551 by Jamie Flett, on FlickrIMG_1648 by Jamie Flett, on FlickrThis has been a bit of a slow burn this build, as my day job and a young family make finding the time to work on this near impossible. Certain financial limitations have slowed it too along the way. It's been fun to date... painful too with long spells of down-time due to other commitments... a close encounter with the car tipping off its axle stands... two cases of severe arc eye... and the odd trip to the A&E.
I'm going to starting posting as much of the content about the build that I have documented on another forum whenever I can. Please bear with me as there is a lot of it.
It all began when I bought my V6 Type R back in 2004. I had a deposit on a 00 Type R with 18k kilometers on it when the seller disappeared with a substantial deposit and left me high & dry. The unfortunate thing was I had sold my then current daily GT555 Impreza Turbo to fund it and was car-less but hell bent on buying a Type R. Back in 04 in Ireland these were not the most common car and when one came up for sale up in Antrim I jumped at the opportunity and bought it. This may have been a slightly emotional & rushed decision, as I do pride myself for being good at spotting accident damage but the car I'd bought, began to give me trouble a few months down the road and it was then I discovered that the previous owner had crashed the car (DS front) and 'failed' to tell me.
The damage wasn't that bad... but I was never truly happy that the car would be 100% unless I took on substantial repair work. It had been repaired... but not to a standard I would have liked. On later inspection I discovered they had pulled the DS leg back into position which had weakened it and therefore the only thing for me to do was strip the front and replace the leg. It was at about this time that financially running a Type R as a daily driver was proving quite expensive so until I could decide what to do with the accident damage that needed tidying, I choose to take it off the road.
This is when it all went awry. I got the hair-brained idea that I should build a 22B rep. I spent nearly 2 years planning this with several trips to the UK looking at different kits. At the time a lad called Phil Chapman was doing very tasty Carbon 22B kits... but they were very pricey... but I was still keen to go that route.
Soon after meeting Phil I saw a white S5 WRC replica on RCM's (Roger Clark Motorsports) 'Cars For Sale' section. It was a customers car that had been given to Prodrive when new and converted using genuine Prodrive steel 1/4 panels, sills & Fr wings. Soon after I saw it Olly & Matt made the decision to use it as the basis as the Gobstopper 1. I was hooked though. No matter how sexy the 22B is... a WRC arched car was just 10 times better looking. Numerous phone calls to Prodrive to get them to reproduce the steel panels were to no avail.. they had stopped supporting the early cars and me nagging them wasn't going to change that. They did kindly put me in touch with Rodney in WRC Spares though. And the rest is history. I spent another year stripping the car and selling parts not required, so as to fund the new carbon/kevlar panels.
I was very naive when I began this... I've learned a massive amount along the way which I'll happily share... but I never thought the build would end up being to the extent it now is. The initial idea was to build a WRC replica that would be identical externally. Along the way... like a lot of good projects... it grew legs and got out of control. I planned to fit the rear quarter & sills... bolt on some front wings and two new bumpers... fit some spacers to widen the track... and hey presto... jobs a good un.
But I've learned so much along the way and realized that each problem once solved would create another. I also made the insane decision to fully strip the shell and go the caged, bare interior route.
11 years working in a tough job... and a love of design and cars forced me to make the decision a couple of years ago to quit my job and make this 'build' my business. I've been designing and fabricating so many bespoke parts along the way for this which gave me the confidence to go out on my own and start producing my own parts. From basic thermal spacers, to FIA allow fire walls & now full S5 Carbon WRC panels for the 1997/98 Prodrive Impreza rally cars. It's made something I've been passionate about for years and turned it into a a job!
So that's how it all came about. I'll start to fill in the gaps from the start to where I'm at now, over the next while. Thanks for looking.
J.
fair play, can't wait to see the finished article.
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