In motorsport, loads of clever innovations have sprung from a close reading of the rulebook. For Sam Albert, a loophole in the American Rally Association regs led him to an unconventional project: a 2004 Subaru WRX STI with a Ferrari V8. Yes, you read that correctly.

Albert, a rally driver and instructor at Dirtfish Rally School in Washington State, started the build nearly two years ago after discovering the American Rally Association allowed a naturally aspirated engine of up to 4.5-litres to run unrestricted. A search for a fitting powerplant led him to the power-dense Ferrari F136 V8. He found an example that was close enough to the price of a competition-tuned Subaru flat four, and got to work.

Not surprisingly, pairing Japanese with Italian wasn’t quite as easy as it is at, say, a Las Vegas dinner buffet. The project required tons of custom work to get the various parts to fit together. Turns out, to no one’s surprise, you can’t just buy a swap kit.

We filmed most of this episode of American Tuned during final shakedown before the car’s debut at this year’s Olympus Rally outside Shelton, Washington. Needless to say, Albert and co-driver (and girlfriend) Krista Skucas would be fielding the only Maranello-powered Subaru, that could deliver a glorious Italian aria and spit fire along the event’s backwoods rally stages.

Dialing in the Subaru’s expected weight distribution was the easy part, according to Albert, who was able to achieve a close-to-stock 57 front/43 rear, although with a net 50 kg weight penalty. The real issue, he says, was cooling. “The car had mostly proven itself on the dyno as being able to run and deliver power without issue,” Albert wrote on his build website. The V8’s size meant moving the radiator to the rear, and it would take some experimentation to find out how much venting he needed.

As you’ll see in the episode, things didn’t go well for Albert and Skukas at Mt Olympus, but the duo went on to score an overall win later in the year at Canada’s Big White Winter Rally in British Columbia. For 2024, Albert says he’ll be 3D modelling the STI’s suspension in Solidworks and looking for ways to tweak the geometry to improve performance ahead of rally season.

11 minutes 54 seconds

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