2000 Subaru Impreza 2.5RS - Super Street Magazine

"Yo Jonny, hold on to my camera stuff for a minute, I need to use the restroom."

"Dammit, Carter, can't you make it through one Hot Import Nights without taking a leak?"

"Dude you know I have the bladder of a six-year old girl. And it doesn't help that we had all that soda with that salty Chicago dog-damn thing didn't even have any ketchup! Just chill here for a second, next to that gold car."

"What gold car? Oh snaps. That Impreza's clean! Carter, I think we just a found a feature car..."

I'm not sure if it's from the water plumbed from Lake Michigan or from all the damn wind, but there's a unique trait to Chicago. Residents of the windy city have a natural propensity for doing things big. From thick Giordano's pizzas to tall skyscrapers to huge Mr. Beef Italian Beef sandwiches to gi-normous stores off of Michigan Ave, when it comes to building things they don't mess around-especially when it comes to their rides. Ming Ng (yes, he's missing a vowel) with his '00 Subaru Impreza 2.5RS is no exception.

Quiet at first, Ming comes off reserved, living up the "shy" in Chi-town. Start talking to him about cars, and the Junior at University of Illinois at Chicago springs to life. Like all Chicagoans, Ming wanted to do big things with a project car while going against the typical grain. "At the time I bought the 2.5RS, Subaru's weren't popular at all and I wanted to do something different," Ming explains. And "something different" Ming definitely did.

One of the obvious shortcomings of the 2.5RS GC8 is the motor. Although it comes equipped with the standard Subaru all-wheel drive, it lacks the panache of its Japanese counterpart and its younger sibling, the US spec GD-chassis WRX-the one that comes with a turbocharged EJ powerplant. Utilizing research expertise from his Industrial Design major, Ming discovered that a turbocharged EJ20 motor out of a JDM STi would fit easily into his engine bay using the stock mounts. The only thing that needed to be changed was the US crossmember for a Japanese unit. The hard part now would be sourcing a complete JDM EJ20 motor in the States.