In a recent video for his YouTube channel, DriveTribe, Richard Hammond revealed that the best car he ever drove on The Grand Tour was the special edition Subaru Impreza WRX STI from “A Scandi Flick.” After some thorough tuning and restoring, he is finally getting his car back.
Dubbed Martin, because of its vandalized Martini livery, the car was always a sporty piece of kit, but when Hammond took ownership of it, he decided to hand it over to the DriveTribe team in order to modify it. Despite being named after it, the first thing the team did was remove the Martini wrap.
“We wrapped it for the show, because it was a bit of fun, but I kind of agree [with the YouTube commenters], thank you very much for your forceful suggestions, that we return it to blue, because it is iconic,” he said. “It’s kind of nice to see it throw off that silly outfit, and ‘here I am,’ in the iconic blue with gold wheels.”
Read: From Seamen To Itchy Urus, Richard Hammond Picks His Favorite Car From The Grand Tour
The team also cleaned up the body, getting rid of rust, and buffing out some of the dents that were incurred during the filming of the episode. However, they left the hitch because they felt it was part of the car’s story. Hammond doesn’t seem too sure about it, though.
The car also got new coilovers, fresh brakes, and new tires. The biggest changes occurred under the hood, though. Although he initially said he wanted 600 hp (447 kW/608 PS) — a request he admits was a bit “ambitious and childish” — the car actually wound up with 530 hp (395 kW/537 PS) thanks to a stroker kit and a handful of other modifications.
That means that it is a serious performer. Unfortunately, Hammond doesn’t get a chance to drive it yet and find out what all that extra power is like (the last time he drove it, it had around 180 hp/134 kW/182 PS less). However, as he points out in the video, plenty of others have driven it, including co-host Mike Ferny, and you can see his reactions to the modifications below.