It seems like every time we turn around there’s a newer, cleaner-than-the-last, modified WRX coming out of the Northeast. We should know—we’ve had most of them on our pages. But where one became a race-prepped breath of fresh air among a sea of custom audio/bodyworked show cars (Feb. ’11), and the other a quarter-million-dollar culmination of the most expensive, most exotic schwag most can only dream of owning (Sept. ’10), William Bakajin’s STI is different. It’s got all the parts, with none of the reservation. It’s an STI built by a guy like the rest of us, with all of the street- and track-driving scars to prove it.
William is a bit different, too. Where most cars as clean and highly modified as his were assembled in only a few months, with old money or extensive corporate sponsorship connections, William’s been chipping away at his since he scraped together enough cash from his boba-tea job to afford its down payment. And unlike others who sought to build their STIs into flawless, Best-of-Show–winning machines to unseat current Best-of-Show winners, William just wanted to have fun. “I had the ECU reflashed on the way back from the dealership,” he comments, about his first few hours with the car back in 2005. “It had six miles on the odometer. I took it to the track that weekend and from there just got hooked.”
Modifications were added bit by bit, and the car was enjoyed on the streets to and from school, at the track on weekends, and anywhere else William needed to get from point A to point B—the STI was his only car. And then it blew up in 2007, the result of a faulty aftermarket injector.
Another reason William’s different: He’s a self-made businessman. Originally from Indonesia, his past was in show cars. After relocating to Washington for school and buying/beating the Subie, he had a moment of enlightenment: use his overseas connections to produce carbon-fiber components for race and show crowds alike, and sell them globally. For Stateside enthusiasts, 2008 and 2009 might have been hard years, but those living in booming economies in China, Southeast Asia, and parts of Eastern Europe poured their increasingly valuable currencies into their cars at much the pace as we did a decade earlier. William took full advantage, and grew his newly founded Speed Architech into a self-sustaining, profitable company—one that, in turn, let him dump money into his own car.
When he decided to kick his project into high gear, William made his first stop Garage Autohero in Woodinville, WA. Over the next few months, William and owner Ray Stonehocker (badass name) tore the STI apart and got to work fabricating a 10-point ’cage, assembling the JDM EJ257 engine, rotating its intake manifold, bolting on a Blouch Dominator turbo and 1,000cc/min injectors, and fabricating intercooler and exhaust piping. The result? Over 470 awhp and 450 lb-ft of torque from 21 psi, on a stock ECU tuned by Dominic Acia of Maxwell Power Service in Marysville, WA.
You’ll also notice the suspension—it’s hard not to with a spec sheet about as long as the engine’s. William added most of that himself, and don’t think his goal was to set it up with the freshest ish. It was, but insofar as it brought genuine track-worthy benefit, hence the Do-Luck eight-point subframe brace, Whiteline anti-lift kit and rear subframe lock kit, urethane replacing every stock rubber bushing imaginable, and, of course, Tein Flex coilovers at the corners. You won’t see any special brake love in the pics, since William upgraded them the week after we shot (good lookin’, holmes!), but his STI now flexes Brembo eight-piston forged aluminum calipers biting giant 380mm rotors.