SECOND-HAND SENSE : There was a time when spilling through a forest stage in a rally car with the deafening combination of a turbo charged engine and gravel flying up to the underside of the car was my idea of an exciting day out.
These days, even the sight of low-profile tyres is almost enough to make me lose interest in a car. As the song says, it isn't youth but fearlessness that is wasted on the young. But there are plenty of people out there who haven't got the performance thing out of their systems - our per capita ownership of Subaru Imprezas must be a source of mystery to the people who sell them.
You won't find too many Imprezas in your supermarket car park and most people probably would not even recognise one. But to the cognoscenti the car is the epitome of speed, traction and power.
Originally introduced in 1993, it is perhaps the nearest thing one can buy to a works-prepared rally car with a road-going licence. Fitted with a turbo engine and 4-wheel- drive, the more powerful version was originally engineered to get from 0 to 100 km/h (60 mph) in 5.2 seconds. It has a top speed of 229 km/h (142 mph) and it pushes out 215 hp.
By any standards, that's exceptional but who needs this kind of raw power? Quite a few, it seems. There's no escaping the fact that many of these cars on our roads are driven by people who neither recognise nor understand the kind of driving skill it takes to drive a car like this safely. Even Colin Mc Rae, the Scot who put the Impreza on the map and won the world rally championship title three years in a row, has had his spills in the car.
If you really want a car like this, be prepared to be shunned by the rest of the population and to be of constant interest to gardaí. Even allowing for speeding offences the Impreza, especially the souped-up WRX version, is a favoured choice of transport among the criminal classes (There was a time when Subaru was the choice of country vets and farmers who were doing very nicely with their dairy quotas).
There are less exotic versions of the car. However, even the 1.6 petrol version, designed for the less macho driver, has a rear spoiler.
One cannot detract from the car's abilities. This is a superbly engineered car. The boxer engine has lashings of power, steering is precise and positive, grip offered by the 4-wheel-drive system excellent and overall driving feedback is such that conventional cars seem to fade from the memory. Rally-style seats, instrumentation and pedals all add to the impression of the experience.
Subarus are among the world's most reliable cars. They have won several top places in the renowned JD Power surveys for customer satisfaction. Turbos, however, add a lot of wear and tear to a car and one should have a car like this very carefully checked out before buying - 4-wheel-drive systems can suffer and can be very costly to repair.
There is no recall record on the Impreza, which is a good thing. Neither is there a EuroNCAP crash test result so the car remains unproven in accident testing terms.
Starting with the less powerful but not exactly feeble 1.6 version, a 2003 model with 10,000 on the clock and with a good level of extras has an asking price of €16,750. A 2001 version with a 2-litre engine and 70,000 on the clock will cost you about €21,000 and the ultimate WRX version registered in 2003 - with enough power to rattle your fillings and 50,000 on the clock - will set you back about €33,000.
FOR: If your idea of style is spoilers, bulges and flared styling then this is the car for you
AGAINST: Some versions will make you look like you are driving a getaway car. Very poor fuel consumption figures