This amazing Subaru serves up plenty of synergies with that competition backstory, too.

It started its life as a Prodrive Impreza WR Sport hailing from 1998.

The “WR” stood for World Rally and endowed this special edition with a raft of extra goodies direct from the Prodrive store cupboard.

Then owner, Mark, was convinced this would be all the Impreza he needed but was soon persuaded otherwise by friends and peers.

The first step was to make a range of Stage 1 enhancements including revised intake arrangements, a remap and de-cat exhaust system.

Round 1 yielded an impressive 320bhp on the dyno.

Eager to see how his car fared in competition, Mark arranged some runs down Santa Pod’s legendary ¼ mile strip.

His standard five speed gearbox had other ideas, quickly going from five speeds to no speed on the way to Santa Pod.

Rather than damping his ardour this dragstrip disaster served to precipitate the next bout of upgrade fever.

A six speed STi gearbox was fitted together with an...