It feels like just yesterday that the Subaru WRX STI was a semi-affordable gateway to the world of rally-bred performance, offering all the tools you’d need to get sideways on your local dirt road while looking like Ken Block or Travis Pastrana on a closed stage. But the truth is, that hasn’t been reality for a while now.
The STI has been dead since 2021, forcing buyers to look elsewhere, in the form of cars like the Toyota GR Corolla, or shop used. With Subaru continuously teasing STI concepts without production intent or releasing low-production specials for the Japanese market only, it feels more and more likely that the car world may never see a proper STI again.
Collectors are starting to realize this, which means the prices of used, low-mileage, unmodified STIs are beginning to skyrocket. This latest auction from Cars & Bids, where a totally normal, not-at-all-special WRX STI just sold for an eye-watering $107,000, is proof.
If Any STI Is Going Over Six Figures, It’s This One
The thing about STIs, like most of the Japanese performance car segment, is that people love to put their own personal touches on their cars. Whether that’s a body kit, new wheels, a cold-air intake, a tune, new suspension, or just a badge delete, it’s actually pretty tough to find a used WRX STI on Facebook Marketplace that hasn’t been modified in at least some small way.
Inversely, when people go to buy cars like this, they’re more often than not seeking out a totally stock example, because they’d like to be the ones making their own modifications. A clean slate from which to begin your project is always better than picking up where someone else left off. This drives the demand for stock vehicles higher. And since supply is lower, people are willing to pay more for the opportunity, especially since they can’t be found new at dealerships anymore.
Things get even more extreme in the collector realm. Finding an STI that, in addition to never having been modified, has barely even been driven is doubly tough. Because these cars are practical four-door sedans with five seats, all-wheel drive, and a real trunk, many of them pull double-duty as daily drivers and weekend warriors. Even the cleanest, unmodified cars you see for sale regularly online are bound to have some miles on the clock.
The STI you see here, though, is different. The car is a 2004 model, known in the Subaru community as the “Blobeye,” with a scant 880 miles on the odometer. If the mileage wasn’t enough, it’s also the ideal spec, painted in iconic World Rally Blue with gold BBS wheels. It is, of course, totally unmodified and presents without flaw. The CarFax is unsurprisingly free of issues, with one owner from 2003 to 2025.
The paint is in perfect shape, the light clusters are free of hazing, there’s no fart cannon exhaust sticking out of the bumper, and no tinted windows. It even still has that airbag tag thing sticking out of the passenger side of the dashboard. As far as collector-grade STIs go, this one is undoubtedly one of the best in existence. So it’s no surprise it went for big money. But even in the world of big-money STIs, this one stands out.
Just How Expensive Are These Things Going To Get?
Let’s put some context into that $107,000 sale price. For $107,000, you could go out and buy two very well-equipped GR Corollas or three new MX-5 Miatas. For just a couple thousand dollars more, you can buy a shiny new Lotus Emira.
Going by sales data from Cars & Bids and Bring a Trailer, this STI is the most expensive normal, standard-production WRX STI ever to sell on either of those platforms. The only versions that sold for more were 22Bs, which are Japanese-only, limited-production, rally homologation specials built in exceedingly small numbers in the late 1990s.
Amazingly, this STI actually beat out one of the 22Bs sold on Bring a Trailer; the one above sold in 2024 and went for just $106,000. Sure, it had some modifications and 44,000 miles on the clock, but still, for a normal, American-market STI to outsell a real 22B is pretty nutty. It just goes to show how valuable a truly factory-fresh piece of equipment can be.
The only other STIs that come close to this 2004 model are S209s. This was another limited-production model based on the 2019 STI that got specific bodywork, gold BBS wheels, a bigger turbocharger, Brembo brakes, and stiffer Bilstein dampers. Subaru’s 2022 announcement that it wouldn’t be making a new STI set off a flurry of high-dollar sales for this model on BaT that year, with most selling between $80,000 and $100,000. Only one, this white example, was able to match this 2004 model, selling for the same $107,000. But that car had just 10 miles on the clock, and it was limited to just 209 examples.
I don’t think this is the top, either.
All you have to do is look at the sale of a certain Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution that took place back in 2024 to understand where the used WRX STI market is going. The Evo, the STI’s eternal rival, went out of production in 2015, and like the STI, low-mileage, unmodified examples are getting extremely tough to find. And the clean, bone-stock examples that do exist are going for big money. This one, a totally stock IX MR with 461 miles on the odometer, sold for $161,000 on Bring a Trailer. Like the blue STI, this wasn’t some ultra-limited-production model. It was just totally stock and basically hadn’t been driven for nearly 20 years.
If Subaru continues not to offer a new STI, I have a feeling it’s only a matter of time before normal, collector-grade cars get this expensive. Thankfully, for every six-figure, ultra-clean STI out there, there are about one hundred well-used, modified cars out there for us normies to enjoy.
Top graphic image: Cars & Bids
I stumbled backwards into a stock Bugeye with 172k (engine rebuilt @ 162k) for $3k just a couple months before Covid hit. It’s certainly not pristine—but every gravel chip and branch pinstripe tells of fun slides & delighted chortles—and a few squawks of alarm along the way.
I don’t want pristine: I drive my shitbox 😉
I never paid a penny for the three STIs I’ve had.
Not even for dinner?
If you give them Pizza Hut’s phone number when they ask for yours, I think that counts as dinner.
$31,959 in 2004 invested into an S&P index fund, would now be $273,263.
This was a weird way for the owner to NOT use a car, and to lose money.