The Subaru Impreza's descent into SOTW territory has been a sad thing to witness. Most of the time a car slides into sight of Shed's £1k budget in a graceful way. Normally, age and miles slowly push the subject motor's value, sometimes a reputation for high running costs or flaky reliability pushes it into Shed's clutches.

Sometimes, however, a car's credibility just gets thoroughly ripped to shreds by the too-often misguided attentions of the 'modifying' set. It's hard to say exactly when this happened with the Impreza, but at some point the car venerated by a generation of rally fans began to attract the attentions of the 'wrong sort of people'.