Win a 31,000-Mile 1996 Subaru Impreza Coupe on Gold BBS STI Wheels

The car: a GC8 that nobody used up

Everyone remembers the first-generation Impreza for the 2.5RS and for the WRX and STI cars that never officially came here. This is the other one — the naturally aspirated 2.2-liter coupe Subaru sold as cheap all-wheel-drive transportation, and that almost nobody thought to preserve. Prime Driven's example is a 1996 coupe with two owners and 31,000 original miles on a clean title and Carfax, sending its SOHC flat-four through a five-speed manual and Subaru's symmetrical all-wheel drive.

The shop says the interior is near showroom, the A/C is ice cold and everything works — and, more usefully, that the timing belt and water pump have been done. On a 30-year-old interference-belt Subaru that single line item is what separates a bargain from a headache. The build is light and tasteful rather than heavy-handed: BC Racing coilovers and a set of OG gold BBS STI wheels, which is exactly the look most GC8 owners chase and rarely the direction a giveaway car gets taken.

Why it matters

Be clear-eyed about what this is. Roughly 135 horsepower when new means it is a momentum car, not a fast one. That is also the point. The GC8 shell is light, the all-wheel drive is honest, and a stock-motor 2.2 coupe will happily be daily-driven, rallycrossed and parked outside without the anxiety a built turbo car brings. Cars in this condition simply don't exist in numbers anymore — the cheap ones were driven into the ground, and the good shells mostly got harvested for 2.5RS swaps. Thirty-one thousand miles and an untouched interior is the rare part here, not the spec sheet.

If you win it, the usual GC8 homework still applies. Look hard at the rear quarters, strut towers and rear subframe for rust, expect the third-gear synchro to be tired on any five-speed of this era, and budget for rear wheel bearings. None of that is a knock on this particular car — it's just what the platform asks of an owner.

The fine print worth knowing

Entries come from spending: one automatic entry for every $25 spent on Prime Driven's store, calculated pre-tax and before shipping, with a hard ceiling of 25 entries per person no matter which route you use. The free route is a hand-printed mail-in card, and the operator's exact wording and mailing address are reproduced on this page.

The close condition is the unusual bit, and it cuts in the entrant's favor. The giveaway ends at 11:59:59 p.m. PST on August 26, 2026, or the moment 800 different entrants are in — whichever happens first. That is a cap on people, not on tickets, so the field cannot balloon the way an uncapped sweepstakes does, and with the counter sitting at 13% full the odds here are unusually legible for a car giveaway. The flip side of the same rule: because the 25-entry limit is per person, someone who spends $625 is holding 25 times the tickets of someone who spends $25.

On value, the rules put the ARV at $4,900 and offer a $4,900 cash alternative. That is a conservative number for a 31,000-mile survivor on BBS golds, which mostly means the car is the better half of that choice. Prize taxes are the winner's responsibility, as always — at this value level that's a manageable bill rather than the five-figure surprise a supercar giveaway hands you.