Just getting around to posting this:
We traveled to the island of Chios Greece for vacation this past summer as we often do to visit my in-laws. This year the price for car rental has reached 70 euro a day - insanity. After a long discussion with my wife we decided that it no longer made any financial sense to continue to rent a car every summer. Up until now we have been going for ~3 weeks as that is all the PTO I am given each year; however, my wife doesnt work and has long discussed going for longer - 2 or 3 months in the summer to spend time with her parents. It gives an opportunity for our children to build memories with their maternal grandparents.
Given the car rental prices consistently going up each and every year and the fact my wife wants to spend more time there in the summer we decided it was time to purchase a car. Now came the fun part
😀. I searched through FB ads and car.gr to find a fun car to have urgh I mean a good family car. I quickly ran into a couple of issues though: being that Chios is an island you are very limited in terms of selection of whats for sale. For frame of reference the population on the island is only about 54,000. If you want to find something outside of an island that would entail booking travel - either boat or plane- to somewhere like Athens. Spend a couple of days looking at cars. Find a local mechanic you trust to bring the car to for them to give it a once over. Then pay to have the car put on a boat and brought back to Chios were you proceed with the tags, plates etc. Not really feasible for someone on a 3 week vacation. So I was left with searching Chios for cars. First I test drove a VW polo with a Audi TT engine swap.
***As a side note: test driving cars is Greece was a much different experience than here in the USA. In my experience test driving cars in the USA is all about the owner telling you to baby it. This guy in Greece was basically telling me to step on it harder at which point I informed him that my foot was to the floor and therefore I physically and literally couldnt *step on it* any harder.***
During my search I did find this:
At first glance looks unassuming. Regular old WRX maybe. But a closer look reveals that something is off. Its not an imprezza. We can tell that from the Turbo. Its not a WRX since its 1.6L. I did a lot of searching and found subaru made a TS model with a 1.6L but very little information on a turbo version. I did find an old forum post that speculated that Subaru had made this specific model for the Greece market. In Greece there are heavy taxes levied on citizens who own cars above 1.6L. I checked that part out and found it to be true. So Subaru maxed out the engine size and then tacked on a turbo. Really interesting stuff and was fun to read about. Wasnt for sale tho
🙁
My search continued on until I was able to find an old listing for sale post from about a year and half back:
A 2001 WRX, 3rd owner. 191k KM on it. I inquired and indeed it still was for sale. The now owner was a mechanic who did all the work on the car himself. He installed AM handmade exhaust purchased from athens, a blowoff valve, STI dash, STI boost, headlights and engine temp gauges, roof scoop, decals etc.. The best part is he kept all of the original parts which were included in the sale. The price was too good to pass up. Especially when I compared them to what prices would normally go for here in the states. I decided to purchase. A WRX is a great car for Greece as many of the roads have many turns, are very windy, on the edge of a cliff, and often dont even have guard rails. WRX being a rally car is perfect. Fun to drive, AWD, good power for climbing those mountains, and can hold the 2 car seats for the kids.
Hope you guys found it interesting. Wanted to share.
