Subaru might have killed off the WRX STI for now but that hasn’t stopped lovers of the model from tuning and modding it to their hearts’ content. One such owner is Sam Albert who happens to own a WRX STI that he competes in stage rally events with. He’s been wanting to add power and so he came up with an unconventional solution: drop a Ferrari F136 V8 under the hood.
Albert explains why he chose a Ferrari V8 in a video on his personal YouTube channel. Basically, it comes down to regulations. So long as the engine is naturally-aspirated and below 4.5 liters, he won’t have to restrict power. So he bought himself a 4.3-liter F136 IB V8 engine from a Ferrari California.
He also says that there’s a big benefit to the Ferrari engine over the Subaru flat-four in terms of the torque curve. While the Japanese four-banger hits a higher peak torque it also dips quite quickly. That sounds great but it actually exceeds the grip offered by gravel tires. The Italian V8 provides smoother power delivery over more time.
Read: This Ferrari F430 Swapped Its Sequential Semi-Auto For A Gated 6-Speed Manual
At the same time, it’s going to create a few drawbacks like a heavier weight distribution toward the front of the vehicle. WRX STIs are already known for understeer so this one will require additional tuning to mitigate that factor as much as possible. Listening to it on the dyno makes it sound completely worth it though.
In the following clip, we get a chance to hear it both with a custom exhaust and with it simply dumping the exhaust out at the end of the header. Why the difference? Well, mid-tuning session the team lost the custom driveshaft so it had to go back to the stock unit which interfered with the exhaust system.
It seems like tuning is going well as Albert says that “it made near identical to stock reported Ferrari numbers.” That’s probably somewhere around 453 hp (338 kW) and 358 lb-ft (485 Nm) of torque. To put it simply, it should be pretty fast and sound amazing at the same time once it’s back on the rally circuit.