This Ex-Ken Block Subaru Impreza Rally Car Could Be Yours

It’s been almost two years since Ken Block tragically died in a snowmobile crash, but his name resonates among the car community as strongly now as it ever did. We’re sure there’ll be plenty of people, then, keen to get their hands on this: a Subaru Impreza used by Block and his long-time co-driver Alex Gelsomino in the Production World Rally Championship in 2007 and 2008.

The auction listing, on Doug DeMuro’s Cars & Bids platform, describes it as a 2004 Impreza WRX STI, although we’re a little sceptical of that model year given it’s got the ‘Hawkeye’ front end, which didn’t arrive until 2005. Anyway, it was converted to Group N rally spec by Vermont SportsCar, the technical partner for Subaru’s North American motorsports efforts.

Group N rules stipulated that the cars were to remain as close to production spec as possible, with the major changes being the sort of safety gear required for hammering down a tree-lined dirt road. That means this car uses the same 2.5-litre turbocharged flat-four and six-speed manual gearbox as standard, although some engine tweaks including a racing ECU, anti-lag and a new exhaust system are included.

Elsewhere, it includes uprated suspension control arms, sway bar end links and rally-ready Ohlins remote-reservoir coilovers, plus some excellent 15-inch Speedline wheels wrapped in all-terrain Pirelli Scorpion rubber.

In addition to being piloted by Block, it was also driven by Travis Pastrana, running a total of six events in the PWRC across 2007 and 2008. It then went on to be campaigned in the American national championship, by drivers including the late Dave Mirra.

Whoever buys it won’t just be getting a highly usable rally toy with some serious provenance: they’ll also get a day’s tuition at the famous DirtFish Rally School in Washington State, and five per cent of the sale proceeds will go to the 43 Institute, the charity set up in Block’s memory.

As we write this, with just over eight hours left on the auction, the highest bid is $75,000 (around £59,000), which unsurprisingly seems to be at the higher end of the Group N Impreza going rates. We’ll update this article with the final price once it’s sold.