I have been looking for a daily driver and a music gear hauler for a long time (and honestly more vigorously than I had been searching for a job). My heart was more or less set on a 3rd generation 4Runner. Sadly, the ones I had looked at have been absolutely beat to hell. So I expanded my horizon to any generation 4Runner or Land Cruiser. And still nothing in the right price range and quality range.
A friend of mine had picked up a 2008 Subaru STI recently and I fell in love with it. So I got to thinking an older WRX wagon would be cool and suit my requirements (haul stuff, reliable, and all wheel drive). And again, prices and quality just didn’t line up. Until I found this little car:

Apparently Subaru built this ill-fated car, the 9-2x, for a few years for SAAB. The typical SAAB consumer didn’t take to it so they stopped making them. It has all the underpinnings of a WRX Impreza but with a slightly more adult look to it. What this means is I was able to get a fantastically reliable sport wagon with a 2.0 litre, turbo, 4 cylinder, boxer engine producing 240bhp and room for my gear at a very reasonable price.
There’s some light damage to some of the body panels that you might expect from a 5 year old car with 80,000 miles on the odometer but, the rest of the car is in really great shape (not the least of which is the awesome 2 tone leather interior). I’m super excited to have another great vehicle in my stable and look forward to putting many, many more miles on this fine piece of machinery.