Glancing through a copy of our sister publication European Car the other day, as I often do to keep up with office water-cooler conversation (I have no real interest in overpriced status symbols that fall second-tier to Japanese imports in all areas of vehicle performance that actually matter), I stumbled across a press release announcing the release of the '10 Brabus E V12. For those not familiar, let me enlighten: It's a $650,000 Mercedes Benz E-class Coupe. That's it. Well . . . one that's got an obnoxiously large V-12, some suspension improvements, bigger brakes, a minimal aero package, and a few carbon fiber odds and ends. For a mere 13 and a half times the E-class Coupe's base price of $48,000-or about the cost of three brand-new '10 Lamborghini LP560s-one could double their E-coupe's power output, shave a few feet off its braking distance, and ride around town decked out in about a hundred Brabus logos per square centimeter. Here's another reason not to see anything special about such price-gouged pomp: Chris Dunbar's '06 STI does it all better for a fraction of the price.
The term "fraction" is used lightly here. Chris estimates the total cost of his build-his cost, complete with some sponsored parts and labor-at just under $110,000. We hope you took in all the low-budget glory of the Civic feature on page 30, because there'll be none of that here. For as cool as it is with such little invested, you'd have to be stark-raving mad to compare a Civic to refined, high-dollar European craftsmanship. But we'd back Chris' STI against the bunco Brabus in a heartbeat. Customers of prestigious tuning outfits like Brabus (and Dinan, AMG, GMG, etc.) will be quick to point out that their inflated prices ensure reliability alongside performance. After all, one need only look as far as our May, '10 issue to be reminded of how easily fast Subarus seem to catch fire and/or blow-up. But along with the comparatively high cost of Chris' build comes the high reliability of including only parts and tuning from the most reputable-and most exclusive-companies in the business.
For brevity's sake, we'll keep Chris' back story short: He's owned and built many cars throughout the years (a badass JDM-converted Integra GS-R, an SVT Focus, a handful of high-hp Civics), and originally bought this STI to drive daily to school and work. Once he established his reputation in the tuning community, and-we suspect-came into some money along the way, he set out to transform that daily into the most well-built and unique performance car in the country, and drew up plans to make it happen. He offered to represent the industry's top manufacturers and shops in trade for product, and even if they declined (his build spanned the previous two recessionary years), he paid for their products out of pocket.
His first purchase was a complete Cosworth High Performance Long Block assembly, in which the renowned Formula 1 supplier takes a factory-fresh EJ257 block and cylinder heads, machines them fully, fits them with their own custom-spec schwag, and adjusts/balances/blueprints all moving components for turn-key installation. All for $16,500, in Chris' case [see sidebar].
To the intake side of those new heads, Chris mated a $2,600 Corsa Veloce Track Version rotated intake manifold and fuel-rail setup, and to the exhaust side, a Full-Race twin-scroll manifold and Garrett GT4088R turbocharger, which bleeds out into twin Tial V44 wastegates and a custom Full-Race four-inch titanium exhaust. We're guessing $6K could buy all this, factoring in a healthy "homie" discount.