I, too, think you'd be surprised at how much better and more rewarding a sports car would drive compared to an STI. There is something to be said about how a sports chassis can do a lot of things (i.e. turn in, anti-dive during braking, anti-squat during acceleration) so effortlessly. To get something that was not developed from the ground to do the same thing (i.e. Impreza, Focus, and Civic), you'd need to stiffen the suspension a lot, and often compromise ride quality significantly. For somewhere around 20k, I think you owe it to yourself to not test drive a C5/C6, 986 s, or base 987. Or test drive the least liked Porsche ever the 996. All these cars have good ride quality and great handling characteristics. Also, from my personal experience, they will likely have lower running/maintaining costs than EJ255/257's beyond stage 2 levels. And if you put in a little bit of money into them, you'd have a very capable machine that can take on DD duties very well.
Check out my build thread, my car did not have as much HP as this STI. My car had a built bottom end, 6 speed swap, custom BW EFR turbo kit, good coilvers, etc. I thought if I do a Forza/GT style build with real world money, I could murk a stock S class car. It was a cool/fun car, however, the performance was not worth the $ investment, the ride quality was OK, and the handling was good but not rewarding. The biggest things were the stress and the constant wrenching of keeping the car on the road. Subaru makes great fun cars, I think these cars are great if you need one and only one car with back seats that does some fun stuff and good to drive in winter.
Open invitation to OP and all WSC members in this thread: when you are in Edmonton send me a PM, we'll go for a drive in my C5. Not to convince anybody C5 is a good car, but just to add something to your experience.
