I have an original 93WRX (model GC8A48D). It seems to have an aluminium bonnet, and it certainly has that odd STI front grill badge. Were the early WRXs all STI-engineered? And in which case, are there any differences to the later 240ps 94/95 WRXs when a separate STI model was produced?

Just curious really - want to know a bit about the history of these things.
Zip.

Tricky one this, if your car is a WRX it may not have had STi look at it at all. The STi WRX's have a great deal of engine and other mods. Check the faq on http://www.sidc.co.uk/faq it explains more or less anything you could ever want to know about your car.

The early STi's had the same build codes as the early WRXs, but were different cars. Not sure of the differences between them though.

With the 2nd batch of STi models, then they got their own build codes.

John Hunter has an excellent "analyse your VIN codes" section on his web site at

http://www.cerbera.co.uk, which was translated from some Japanese site.

All Imprezas in Japan have an 'i' badge on the grill (all Jap spec Subarus have unique badging, the six-stars badge never appeared in any of the current models on sale in Japan, apart from the several limited edition WRXs on sale there), STi's have an 'i' badge with pink background and WRX's have an 'i' badge with black background.
As far as I know, all Jap spec WRX's have aluminium bonnets.