"jeebus" (jeebus)
10/09/2015 at 12:27 • Filed to: None
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"jeebus" (jeebus)
10/09/2015 at 12:27 • Filed to: None | 4
| 3 |
I’ve previously established that I have car ADD, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , so I thought I’d start a series about some of the adventures I’ve had in car-land.
Today’s adventure begins at a Subaru dealer. The year was 2006. Everyone blamed George Bush instead of Obama for their life failings. I was shopping for a more baby-friendly replacement to my e36 M3. My wife and I had already owned a 2004 STi (though no longer) and we loved it’s accelerative and G-force inducing abilities. We also loved that flat-four burble. But we didn’t love the rest of the car. It felt like a $12k econobox from the 1990s with a rocket pack strapped to it and superglue dipped tires. It was rickety and tinny. Every pebble you ran over felt like it tried to force its way up your bumhole and the sounds they made while pummeling the undercarriage would trigger PTSD in most war veterans. You couldn’t drown it out with the stereo either, because this car didn’t come with one (the aftermarket add-on wasn’t of any help here, either).
I’d always had a thing for wagons, but the WRX wagon never quite did it for me. The Forester did. So boxy and goofy. So much function over form. Somewhere within I could envision a monster. Something low, with an aggressive stance. Plus I knew the secret that the majority of the population didn’t...this car was essentially a 2.5 liter WRX underneath, with an even more silly final drive ratio (4.44), a manual transmission, and the ability to swap almost any engine or suspension-related part from Subaru’s more sporting models. I drove away from the dealer with a white Forester XT Limited.
I knew this car would be controversial within my group of friends. We were a bunch of Bimmer-nerds, after all. We dreamt of silky smooth inline sixes. We were the reason angel eyes ended up on Hondas. Are those ZKW bro? Or just Depo? We bought cooling systems preventatively because “that overflow tank will totally crack and you’ll be hosed”.
And I was right. Most of my friends asked me when I became a Lesbian. One of my best friends, a man who’s claim to fame is his left hook, looked at me as though I was off my rocker. “You replaced your M3 with this?”
But I knew that I could make them understand. Eventually. Just a few minor changes and they would see the light. Plus right out the gate, this car was essentially JUST as fast as my old M3. In a straight line, that is.
So I got to work. There were a few things that I knew it needed ASAP and so, before the car even cracked 1,000 miles I had already ripped out the shocks and springs, and replaced them with WRX STi units. Those generic-looking, narrow, stock wheels were ripped out too. In place were much larger, and bronze-r, ones.
That goofy grill? Replaced with an STi grill straight from Japan.
Still a tad more roll-happy than I preferred, so a factory WRX STi rear bar was installed to finish things up in the handling department.
Now it looked the part. It handled pretty nicely too. But it needed more power and more importantly, it needed more noise. So I fired up the ol web-browser and headed where so many Newbie Subie owners head, Cobb Tuning. A few credit card transactions later, and this Forester XT was now a “Stage 2” Forester XT. For those that aren’t super l33t cool in the know, that means it had an AccessPort tuner, a custom downpipe, and was running a tune that allowed for a much more entertaining sucking and blowing party than this Lesbo-Wagon was ever originally destined for. It also got a louder muffler because duh....burble.
No longer was this a Forester. It had become something else entirely. But what? I racked my brain for letter combinations that could come of S-U-B-A-R-U and F-O-R-E-S-T-E-R. Surely the perfect combination was attainable. “ROASTER”? “FUBAR”? I turned to my Bimmernerd brethren for answers. “BARF”? “BEAST”?
Nothing was sounding perfect to me. It needed to reflect everything that this car was. Who officially came up with the name, I don’t 100% remember. I think it was Rob, of Dallas Fan-dom. But when I heard it, I knew it was perfect.
FARTBUS. Yes, FARTBUS. This encompassed everything about the Forester perfectly. This wasn’t a car to be taken seriously. It was ridiculous. It would set off alarms in every parking garage, while fitting a family and the dog. It would do 0-30 in 1.3 seconds and make everyone giggle as the boxer motor burbled and screamed to redline. It was FARTBUS.
My wife wasn’t so keen on the name. She even proclaimed that she wouldn’t be seen in the car with a badge like that. I was willing to take that chance anyway, and called that bluff. And thus began the life of FARTBUS.
Fartbus may have had her own identity now, but possibly due to her Lesbian roots, she continually refused to conform to societal norms.
She attended Bimmerfest, and hung out with all the rowdy Germans. Even crashing the famed BMW cruise through Highway 154.
She used her dark tint and spacious hatch to smuggle a known terrorist back into the hotel he had just been banned from.
She went to the drag strip a few times and proved that just because you have a Corvette, it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to beat a goofy-looking wagon.
And that’s the story of Fartbus: From Lesbian to Gangster. Or maybe just Gangster Lesbian. Trust me, she doesn’t care...
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jeebus
> jeebus
10/09/2015 at 22:55 |
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I almost forgot...Fartbus is forever plastered on my garage wall with a print of this chop I did back then.
SlickMcRick
> jeebus
10/09/2015 at 23:40 |
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Many a times I have considered a Forester XT but never pulled the trigger because it was just out of my budget. I have a new dream build now though that’ll be within my grasp hopefully by spring. I want to get a Miata shell and drop a Honda V6 in it. It’s been done a few times and can only imagine how fun it’d be to pull up to Honda Day in that.
LeftHook
> jeebus
10/27/2015 at 22:39 |
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I loved that car.. Except for the gearbox and shifter. Was like a butter churn to operate.