iM Highlight: Sibling Rivalry

Similar, but different. Does that make any sense?

Everyone has their own personal opinion on how a car should be built. Whether it is built as a show car, a track car, a street cruiser, or a functional daily driver, a persons own opinion dictates what their car will look like. Some people like a fast car with a crazy motor that looks completely stock on the outside, others like a car that is super flashy on the outside, but with minimal power mods. And some like both, doing a little bit of both, or if they’ve got tons of money, a lot of both.

They say that when two people are around each other long enough, those two peoples’ tastes tend to influence each others. This seems to be the case with the two Subarus that you see here: My 08 WRX, and my brothers 09 STI.

To the casual observer, they look like pretty much the same car. But to you readers of our site, we know you know which one is which. They are very similar visually with the STI being the wider, stronger, and better handling of the two.

My brother Lester and I both grew up loving cars. Getting older, when we both starting driving, we had completely different tastes on how a car should be built. I was always the one that loved making a car look pretty, always changing up the way things looked without going overboard, always changing small visual appearances here and there. Both my previous rides (96 Civic, and 06 Tacoma X-Runner) reflected that with both having fairly stock motors with nothing done to them. But they looked good.

My brother Lester was the opposite. For the most part, as long as the body was fairly straight, thats all he cared about, because he would be spending most of his time and effort under the hood. Previous examples of that have been his last 3 cars, a decently quick all motor B20 92 Integra, a B20 turbo 92 Civic, and a B18 turbo 96 EK.

So now Lester and I both drive Subarus and both have seem to have grown from an assimilation of our styles. Without going into too much detail, both have been given a healthy boost of power from some mods under the hood, and as well, have some minor visual mods like the similar taillights, and same front lip. Both are lowered about the same, both with 18″ wheels. Our minor in differences in opinion still show in our cars, but the lines are not as clear as they once used to be.

Whats next for these Subies? I keep telling myself I’m done, I love its functionality, and it will continue to be my daily and winter driver. My brother says the same, as its also his daily and winter driver, and is fairly happy with it.

But in the end, we both know we’re lying to ourselves.