A couple of months back I bought an Impreza from a family member. It's probably the rarest spec you could possibly find so it was worth snapping up. No, not a spec C, 22b, b320 etc, a 100% STANDARD example!
On only 42k too.
Well, apart from this thing:
Gone.
I knew the car was mechanically well looked after as it's been in the family around 7 years, I just needed to give the paintwork some TLC.
Here are some detailed before shots to show you what I was up against.
I prewashed the car with the 2 bucket method, pressure washed, sprayed with APC, pressure washed, and repeated.
Iron X doing its thang.
In the sunlight you can see the brown flake in the paintwork, nice.
Brown flake? I told you this car was rare.
Yes, my step mother who owned the car previously painted the fence on a windy day, resulting in an impreza with some form of rash.
I didn't realise how much there was of it. It took me around 2 hours to fully remove all of it! You can barely see it in the photos but it was speckled all over the NS
The headlights didn't look awful, but you can see some hazing in the upper part of the lens.
Using some fine wet and dry paper followed by 2 grades of Menz polish with my DA the lights were looking like new.
I didn't bother with a full correction, just concentrated on fine scratches etc which I got 90% of them out with the DA.
The exhaust was cleaned up with brasso and the windows cleaned using an E cloth (I usually use them in the house but tried them on the car, they're awesome!)
I finished the car with a couple of layers of blackhole, AG HD wax, then a quick spray of Zymol Z6. I'm no detailer, but this method works well for me.
If you look closely, you'll see this is the STI model, it's very subtle and I doubt you would have noticed if I hadn't mentioned it.
I then took the chavvy blue thing to North Wales, Snowdonia for a long weekend..
Apologies for the quality it was taken on an iPhone.
Driving though the mountains, along twisty B roads everything suddenly made sense. The 4wd system is undeniably fantastic, the centre diff control is good fun changing the power to front/back. Acceleration is obviously brisk, but not groundbreaking by todays standards, just hot hatch territory. As a package, they're a fantastic drivers tool.
On only 42k too.
Well, apart from this thing:
Gone.
I knew the car was mechanically well looked after as it's been in the family around 7 years, I just needed to give the paintwork some TLC.
Here are some detailed before shots to show you what I was up against.
I prewashed the car with the 2 bucket method, pressure washed, sprayed with APC, pressure washed, and repeated.
Iron X doing its thang.
In the sunlight you can see the brown flake in the paintwork, nice.
Brown flake? I told you this car was rare.
Yes, my step mother who owned the car previously painted the fence on a windy day, resulting in an impreza with some form of rash.
I didn't realise how much there was of it. It took me around 2 hours to fully remove all of it! You can barely see it in the photos but it was speckled all over the NS
The headlights didn't look awful, but you can see some hazing in the upper part of the lens.
Using some fine wet and dry paper followed by 2 grades of Menz polish with my DA the lights were looking like new.
I didn't bother with a full correction, just concentrated on fine scratches etc which I got 90% of them out with the DA.
The exhaust was cleaned up with brasso and the windows cleaned using an E cloth (I usually use them in the house but tried them on the car, they're awesome!)
I finished the car with a couple of layers of blackhole, AG HD wax, then a quick spray of Zymol Z6. I'm no detailer, but this method works well for me.
If you look closely, you'll see this is the STI model, it's very subtle and I doubt you would have noticed if I hadn't mentioned it.
I then took the chavvy blue thing to North Wales, Snowdonia for a long weekend..
Apologies for the quality it was taken on an iPhone.
Driving though the mountains, along twisty B roads everything suddenly made sense. The 4wd system is undeniably fantastic, the centre diff control is good fun changing the power to front/back. Acceleration is obviously brisk, but not groundbreaking by todays standards, just hot hatch territory. As a package, they're a fantastic drivers tool.
Last edited:
