Subaru WRX GC

This is where the legend starts. The first-generation Impreza turbo is the car that turned a quirky all-wheel-drive underdog into a World Rally Championship force, with Colin McRae and Richard Burns sliding 555-liveried GC8s across every surface on earth. Under the hood sits the EJ20, a 2.0-liter turbo boxer that grew meaner with every revision, topping out with the STI & its signature off-beat idle.

The catch for US buyers: Subaru never sold the turbo GC stateside. We got the naturally aspirated 2.5 RS and its 165 horsepower, so every WRX and STI Version on these shores arrived through the 25-year import window, which the earliest cars have only recently cleared. That makes a clean GC8 quite the scarce commodity.

Whether you're chasing a gold-wheeled Type RA, a coupe-bodied Version, or just the boxer rumble that started it all, the GC is the root of the family tree. Everything after it is a refinement of what happened here.