iM Highlight: Mini Mall Crawler

This mash-up of Pick-n-pull and Kijiji parts started out as a bone-stock, Grandma-spec 2000 Subaru Impreza Brighton wagon. (Not joking, bought from an 80 year old woman.) From there, it turned into a Father / Son project between my Dad and I, with him doing the research, and me helping at pick-n-pull, doing simple tasks or things that require child-sized hands.

The base idea was the Subaru-part-only lift.

Knowing that the Brighton was a base model bucket of simplicity, we were ecstatic that it did, in fact come with air conditioning. However, the sad, non-bolstered seats had to go, and were replaced with heated Forester seats as a bonus from pick-n-pull.

And in order to evade the fashion police for mismatched patterns, we modified some of the interior trim to fit the 50/50 rear folding seats out of the same Forester.

All the parts for the lift were taken from Pick-n-Pull, but a few parts were simply too sad on the scrap cars and had to be bought at the dealership, (Thanks Rally Subaru!) but none were aftermarket. This includes Forester struts, springs, and other Outback/WRX/Forester suspension goodies. All wheel disc brake conversion was a must.

Another must-have goodie for looking like an off-roader in ‘berta is a universal push bar. Add’s +5 HP and +5 Offroad points.  This was another awesome Kijiji find, for $50. Just had to lose the bottom portion of the bumper skin, and mod the mounts to bolt on. More function than form, but hey. Woulda’ jus’ look at it.

To accompany the larger wheels and tires, we ordered “Universal” rubber fender flares from Summit Racing, in order to avoid the pain of chipping and cracking fiberglass or carbon fiber flares.

The stock trim was falling off, so for ease of installation, we used external plastic clips instead of the stupidly painful Subaru clips, as well as gave the car a Monsta-liner second tone, to give it that “Outback” look, as well as protect it from rocks and hide some of the well-used-ness of the car.

A couple more photos of the wagon frolicking in the snow:

The mechanical mod’s are mainly limited to suspension and steering (column had to be lengthened because of the engine lowering), and cosmetic mods are fairly simple and inexpensive. These include the V5 USDM front bumper from my silver RS being cut in half (I broke the bottom of it, oops), and clear JDM corners from Billy’s GF8 (rip Gwen),

as well as a Kijiji-bought Yakima Loadwarrior basket to hold the oversized spare tire and other goodies,

with a Yakima ski rack on top, to haul boards and skis to the hill with the bro-dudes.

Additional interior mods include a dash with a tach! Because the stock dash didn’t have one… It just had a nice Subaru logo to look at.

Although you don’t really need it. -Sadface-

A JVC single-din unit with Bluetooth to keep the drive enjoyable, as I appear to have misplaced all my cassettes.

These switches (which don’t do anything yet, but will control lights and AWD in the future),

Did I mention the drivers seat is fully adjustable, with lumbar support too?

And even though it’s got the weird 4eat front-bias AWD system, you can still do some sweet AWDonuts.

And park it places that your average Camry simply can’t.
It may not be the fastest,

or the most rugged,

or even the best looking;

But it sure does the job and makes me happy.

All the photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/99391113@N05/sets/72157649556221027