iansane said:This has a Datsaniti vibe to it. I love it.
That was exactly what I thought of when I saw the pictures, too. Take an old wagon, add box fender flares, a crazy drivetrain swap, and a red, white, and blue paint scheme...
iansane said:This has a Datsaniti vibe to it. I love it.
That was exactly what I thought of when I saw the pictures, too. Take an old wagon, add box fender flares, a crazy drivetrain swap, and a red, white, and blue paint scheme...
If you ever wanted a GL, buy one now. Fame has a way of distorting prices.
In reply to Appleseed :
True. And these cars have gotten pretty rare. They were bad rusters and they were considered throwaway cars. Nice ones are few and far between.
These whole family of Subarus have vanished from the automotive landscape: DLs, GLs, GL-10s, RX Turbos, XT6/XT Turbos, BRATs, Loyales, Justys. Justys and BRATs are the only ones that pop up with any sort frequency, and that's because of novelty value
In reply to NickD :
Funny you mention the brat, Travis just did some snow jumping in a stock one for YouTube or whatever.
That is just about one of the coolest car I have ever seen. Well done.
NickD said:Like the title says, Travis Pastrana pulled the wrapping paper off of his new Subaru GL Wagon gymkhana car today, and it is wild. As a fan of the old EA82 Subarus, I'm pretty excited about this one, even if there likely isn't much EA82 left to it. These cars are pretty much ignored by all but a small contingent of hardcore off-roaders so it's cool to see one used for a build of this caliber.
I am going to give zero E36 M3s about marketing stunt things like this, but I had to click the thread because GL wagon.
You know there is nothing Subaru underneath it because it does not have two degrees of positive camber 
And grabbing the handbrake would provide lots of plow unless he was trying to do a J turn.
Interestingly the GLs had the same ball joint and strut mounts as the Legacys and Imprezas up to fairly recently. 2015?
Definitely gone now said:In reply to NickD :
Well, that's neat. Would've been neater to see the old EA engine powered up. Oh well.
I don't think Subaru ever got more than 260hp in max effort competition trim. Which is actually still pretty impressive for an engine that looked like someone took an ACVW engine, wrapped a water jacket over the cylinders and heads, and then converted it to OHC with bolt on cam boxes.
They all had 3 main bearings and while the turbo engines (and XT non turbo) got two intake ports per head, probably just to make non-TBI injection easier, they all had single exhaust ports.
This is great, my first car was a GL wagon. It was 4wd with a 5 speed and a 3rd eye headlight.
330icrazy said:This is great, my first car was a GL wagon. It was 4wd with a 5 speed and a 3rd eye headlight.
A GL wagon with 4WD and a 5 spd was a rare car. At least with the 81-84 body. The more square 85 to Loyale model had that combo more often.
330icrazy said:This is great, my first car was a GL wagon. It was 4wd with a 5 speed and a 3rd eye headlight.
The "third eye" passing light was an amazing option.
My best friends mom had what I believe was one of these in the 80s.
I was always amazed by the door open indicator in the instrument cluster. Felt very futuristic.
Another friend had one in college. It overheated going up a big grade on a trip back from spring break. We had the heater on trying to reduce the heat, which sort of worked, but the engine was lunched.
I wonder if Travis's has the spare tire on the engine!
NickD said:GameboyRMH said:80stastic and kickin' rad! I think that actually looks awesomer than the Hoonicorn.
I definitely like it better than Hoonicorn. I actually liked the Hoonitruck better than Hoonicorn, and I have always been disappointed how little we've got to see the Hoonitruck. It did the second Climbkhana and it was in Gymkhana 10, but that was the one where they used all the different vehicles so it only showed up for a portion of that, and that was it. Hoonicorn has been in multiple Gymkhanas, the first Climbkhana, and then has been trotted out for one of the Hoonigan Burnyard Bashes as well as two seasons of Hoonicorn Vs. The World (one season with Ken Block driving, one with 14 year old Lia Block driving). I wonder if he doesn't enjoy driving the Hoonitruck as much.
Hoonicorn sounds way better than the Hoonitruck, which is a factor for the types of videos they do. Hoonitruck (while super cool) has always seemed like more of a Ford marketing driven project to showcase ecoboost performance than something that Block/Hoonigan actually dreamed up. I think stuff like that is part of the reason Ford isn't in the picture anymore. Too many restrictions, or too much influence on what Block could do.
I'm not into the whole gymkhana thing and I'm not a fan of Subarus but that thing is cool.
STM317 said:NickD said:GameboyRMH said:80stastic and kickin' rad! I think that actually looks awesomer than the Hoonicorn.
I definitely like it better than Hoonicorn. I actually liked the Hoonitruck better than Hoonicorn, and I have always been disappointed how little we've got to see the Hoonitruck. It did the second Climbkhana and it was in Gymkhana 10, but that was the one where they used all the different vehicles so it only showed up for a portion of that, and that was it. Hoonicorn has been in multiple Gymkhanas, the first Climbkhana, and then has been trotted out for one of the Hoonigan Burnyard Bashes as well as two seasons of Hoonicorn Vs. The World (one season with Ken Block driving, one with 14 year old Lia Block driving). I wonder if he doesn't enjoy driving the Hoonitruck as much.
Hoonicorn sounds way better than the Hoonitruck, which is a factor for the types of videos they do. Hoonitruck (while super cool) has always seemed like more of a Ford marketing driven project to showcase ecoboost performance than something that Block/Hoonigan actually dreamed up. I think stuff like that is part of the reason Ford isn't in the picture anymore. Too many restrictions, or too much influence on what Block could do.
The Hoonitruck's soundtrack was... unfortunate. Although not nearly as bad as that Mach E Mustang thing that Vaughn Gittin Jr. built. I watched about 30 seconds of that video before the ear-piercing whine from that thing made me click off. Ken Block also seemed notably unenthused by that thing. He made a video where he went and drove it and his reactions were largely "Oh, it's uh...really cool" in a very forced-sounding manner.
I hope it has the GL style shifter/boot. And this instrument cluster surround, that was awesome also.
Patrick said:Mndsm said:I'm not upset by this in any way shape or form. Travis is a great person irl and that's just more fun than I can comprehend.
I love this and yes he is an awesome dude in real life. Anyone who walks up to a stranger with a 6 pack in hand and says Hi I'm Travis, want a beer? is a real one
He offered your kid a beer?
Yeah, that Subie wagon is machined from solid billet awesome, for sure.
Duke said:Patrick said:Mndsm said:I'm not upset by this in any way shape or form. Travis is a great person irl and that's just more fun than I can comprehend.
I love this and yes he is an awesome dude in real life. Anyone who walks up to a stranger with a 6 pack in hand and says Hi I'm Travis, want a beer? is a real one
He offered your kid a beer?
I mean, we are remarking on how awesome he is.
In reply to CyberEric :
The spare in the engine bay was an interesting trait of these cars. On the plus side, that engine had arguably the easiest starter to replace - remove the spare tire and there was the starter. That sort of made up for the one-piece twin-downpipe/catalytic converter assembly. I remember the OEM replacement was some ungodly price back then. So I ended up with the aftermarket replacement that separated the Y part ahead of the cat.
In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :
Right after I got mine, it stopped starting. Hit the key and the starter would click. So I went and bought a new starter, discovered that it took all of ten minutes to replace, turned the key and it still did the same thing. A bit of surfing the Old School section of the Ultimate Subaru Message Board later and I learned that Subaru didn't put a starter relay on those cars. They ran the full starter voltage through the ignition switch and circuityry, and as the wiring and switches got old they couldn't carry enough juice and you would just get a click from the starter. The fix was to go buy a big relay, cut the starter wire and and rewire it so that the ignition switch controlled a relay and the relay fed the starter.
An old blurry pic of my Loyale wagon. Someone had failed to latch the hood at some point in it's life and had folded it up over the roof, so all the support webbing was busted loose and it was pretty wobbly. The crinkled hood also meant that the wiper jets were aimed akimbo and one fired at the base of the windshield and the other shot clear over the roof.
The 944 next to it was not mine. Some guy was driving by and it blew an 8" chunk of the upper radiator hose off and puked all the coolant out on the side of the road. You can just see the puddle of coolant under it. We pushed it down into the driveway and he left it there for a couple days while he got an upper radiator hose. The day after he replaced the upper radiator hose and coolant, I saw it stranded on the side of the road about 5 miles up the road. If I had to hazard a guess, he had some sort of head gasket failure pressurizing his cooling system.
I guess I'll add myself to the list of people who drove a GL wagon before it was cool!
It was a 1.8 4x4 with some sort of Webber Carb poorly fitted, it had a hilarious powerband of only about 700 rpm at the top of the tach.
I bought it as a winter beater, and had dreams of doing lurid power slides through the snow.... first good winter storm, I found a huge parking lot, put it in 4WD, got some speed, gave it a flick and grabbed the handbrake.... massive understeer! It turns out the handbrake actuated the front wheels!
Certainly not a performance machine, but you could fit 12 wheels/tires in the back!
I bought it for $300 and literally drove the wheels off of it when a wheel bearing failed. Very fond memories!
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