Win Your Choice: a 350-WHP 2005 Subaru WRX STI or a Supercharged 2016 Tacoma TRD Off-Road, Plus $1,500

What you're looking at

There are two builds on the table here, and they are aimed at completely different appetites.

The headline car is a 2005 Impreza WRX STI, the blobeye middle child of the three-year US GD run, making a stated 350 WHP and 330 WTQ. Read that as a wheel figure, not a crank number, which puts it comfortably north of the roughly 300 crank horsepower the car left Japan with. The interesting part is not the peak number, it's what the number is built on. The short block is a Subaru Type RA unit, the tougher homologation-flavored bottom end, which is a far better foundation than the standard EJ257 block that the tuning world spent twenty years learning to break. On top of it: GSC valve springs, ARP 2000 head studs, an IAG oil pickup and baffle plate, RCM alloy exhaust cam gears and an Outfront 11mm ported and shimmed oil pump. Those last few items are not power parts. They are the specific fixes for the specific ways these engines die, and their presence tells you more about the build than the turbo does.

The induction and fuel side is almost entirely Cobb: a 20G turbo, SF intake and box, front-mount intercooler, 4-bar MAP sensor, air-oil separator, up-pipe, 3-port EBCS, a 340LPH pump and 1050cc injectors, with Radium side-feed to top-feed rails and an Aeromotive A1000 regulator handling the conversion, plus a Koyo radiator and an Invidia downpipe. The factory downpipe comes with the car, which matters more than it sounds if you ever want to put it back to stock. The rest is sensible chassis work rather than showmanship: BC BR coilovers, a SuperPro bump steer kit, Cobb sway bars on Kartboy end links, new Subaru OEM wheel bearings, ACT HDSS clutch on a new OE STI flywheel, Group N mounts and a full Kartboy shifter setup on Cobb ST-01 wheels. Tuning lives on a Cobb Accessport V3. Smeedia states both vehicles are 50-state compliant.

The alternative is a 2016 Tacoma TRD Off-Road with a Magnuson supercharger, quoted at 380 WHP and 330 WTQ through the automatic. It runs AWE dual exhaust with a bash guard, R1 Concepts slotted front rotors and pads, Bilstein 5100 shocks, Rays 57DRX wheels in Mag Blue on BFGoodrich KO2s, a Warn 10K winch behind a C4 Fabrication front bumper, a Prinsu roof rack with a 40-inch amber light bar, Raxiom sequential headlights, VLand sequential taillights and a genuinely thorough Built Right MOLLE setup inside and along the bedsides.

Why it matters

A supercharged third-gen Tacoma is a well-understood answer to that truck's most-complained-about trait, which is that the 3.5L feels asthmatic exactly where you want it. Bolting a Magnuson to it is the standard fix, and this one has the supporting brake and suspension work rather than just the blower.

The STI is the rarer proposition. Clean, original GD STIs have quietly become collector cars, which has had the odd side effect of making a well-sorted built one a comparative bargain: you get the chassis, the six-speed and the driveline for a fraction of preservation-car money, at the cost of never being the guy with the unmolested example. The honest caveats are the ones that apply to every twenty-year-old turbo Subaru. Neither vehicle's odometer is published, and on an EJ-powered car the mileage is the whole conversation. A 20G and an aggressive tune ask for good fuel and a real relationship with a tuner. And an aftermarket-fueled, aftermarket-turbocharged car is a car you maintain on the aftermarket's schedule, not Subaru's.

The fine print worth knowing

You pick one vehicle. You do not get both. The promotion is titled and marketed as "Subaru STi x Supercharged Tacoma" and the build page details both trucks and cars at length, but the Official Rules narrow it: "The Grand Prize winner will receive their choice of one (1) of the following vehicles: (a) a 2016 Toyota Tacoma; or (b) a 2005 Subaru WRX STI." One grand prize, one winner, one vehicle. There is no value angle to the decision either, because the rules value both identically: "The approximate retail value ("ARV") of each Vehicle is $15,000," and "The total ARV of the Grand Prize, including the $1,500 check, is $16,500." That $16,500 figure appears nowhere in the marketing.

The $1,500 is candid about its own job. The rules describe the check as an amount "which may be used to help offset, but will not completely eliminate, the federal, state, and local tax liability." On a $16,500 prize reported as income, that is a partial cushion, not a solution, and the winner is "solely responsible for all federal, state and/or local taxes." Smeedia will "arrange and pay for reasonable transportation of the Vehicle to the winner within the contiguous United States," but the winner carries "any applicable licensing, insurance, title and registration fees" and must take delivery within ninety days of notification.

On mechanics: entry runs from September 1 to 11:59 p.m. PT on September 30, 2026, with the drawing on or about October 6, 2026. Paid entries accrue at "one (1) entry for every whole $5 spent," and the Quick Entry bundles track that rate exactly, from $35 for 7 entries up to $150 for 30. There is a cap of 300 total entries per person, and odds depend on the total number of eligible entries received. The free route is a real one and unusually generous by the standards of this format: a hand-printed 3x5 card mailed to the administrator earns five entries, the same as $25 spent, and its postmark deadline is the same September 30 as the paid close, with a received-by buffer of October 5 ahead of the October 6 drawing. Eligibility is the fifty states and DC, 18 or older, and claiming the prize requires a valid driver's license from your state of residence. Worth noting for the vetting-minded: the drawing is conducted by Realtime Media LLC, a named third-party administrator in Pennsylvania, rather than by the operator itself, and the sponsor is a registered Washington entity with a street address in the rules. The full mail-in address and eligibility language are printed in Smeedia's Official Rules.