Before all the diehard VAG fans begin to scream 'how could anyone have the cheek to combine a Mk1 Golf with an Impreza?' we should point out that this car has been built to a budget with the main aim that it should be light (it's 200kg lighter than an Impreza), have 4WD, innocent sleeper looks and be capable of some blisteringly quick circuit and quarter-mile times.

The shell could have been something other than a Mk1 Golf GTI, But it just so happened that the co-builder in this project had just been given a stock 1800 GTI that had recently run out of tax and test, we wanted to do somthing different for the Ultimate Street Car event at Santa Pod so we began hatching a plan as to how we could utilise the Golf and combine it with 4WD and plenty of power on a tight budget. This is where the Impreza involvement begins to make sense.

With all the grey Jap imports in the UK, there is now a huge supply of Imprezas and many if the older examples can be brought for a bargain price. The big downside is that people keep crashing them, bringing insurance costs up. But one persons expensive mistake meant we had the perfect donor car to work with. The Impreza we used for the VWRX was a chipped '94 WRX that had been rolled.

We spotted it in a breaker's yard and fortunately it still ran, so we knew it was sound, we intended to use all the running gear, ECU and some of the interior so we just bought the whole car! Late '94 model Impreza WRX's came with 260bhp standard and with the addition of a Superchip, Pipercross air filter and modified exhaust, this example is good for a very healthy and reliable 283bhp.

Of course there was now the slight matter of getting all the Impreza running gear to fit within the relatively tight confines of a Mk1 Golf. Luckily we had access to a garage and four-poster ramp which made it easy to lift the Golf shell up and down on to the hybrid chassis in order to line things up. We started by working from the front to the back of the car not knowing that it would become more complexed the further we got into it!

The new self fabricated bulkhead is actually in the same position as the old VW panel, though the bolt holes have been repositioned to cope with the low-slung flat-four. The Imprezas very low centre of gravity is one of its trump cards and a major contributor to its legendary handling and grip.

We could take advantage of this layout in the build as well as on the track. The Subaru front subframe and legs are positioned very low down, so there was room to fit these under the original strut tops. On the downside we had less width to work with as the stock WRX springs and dampers are quite chunky. This was easily solved by swapping to a set of skinnier coilovers. By using Subaru legs we could also use the WRX's braking system.

This meant we had 277mm vented discs up front and 266mm discs at the rear. The transmission tunnel was next and this required major alteration to fit the Impreza box and 4WD running gear. We got the propshaft shortened "thanks to Propshaft Services based in Surrey".

The stock Impreza exhaust was too big, so we used a F3000 Microphone exhaust. After lots of lifting and lowering of the bodyshell onto the subframe and legs we put everything into place. The VWRX is two inches wider than a standard Mk1 Golf, so arches either side had to be extended by an inch.

The use of the Impreza dash is a more unusual change and was actually a necessity in order to get the car to run properly. We found the turbo wouldn't come on to boost without the cable from the dash to the gearbox being connected, it was a bit fiddly to fit but nothing compared to what we had already been faced with.

One of the hardest tasks in this whole conversion was the wiring. We cut through 50 wires at the front of the car in order to remove the engine, reconnecting everything took us ages. The Whole conversion took ten months of working most weekends and many week-nights.

The VWRX has been built for go not show and has so far managed a 13.1 at Santa Pod quarter-mile and is currently under going some modifications which include: front-mounted intercooler, samco hoses, modified inlet manifold, unrestricted manifold, Apexi boost controller paired with the Apexi ECU, rear mounted radiator in aluminium housing with duckts to feed through plexi glass windows, fuel cell, uprated injectors and rail, oh and a new PDO 580 turbo thats good for 380bhp