When I sat down with Dan Benoit, co-owner of Whiskey Row Automotive in Prescott Valley, Arizona, I knew it was going to be a good conversation. Dan has spent more than 25 years building, fixing, and wheeling Subarus, and he’s one of those people who’s equal parts fabricator, historian, and storyteller. His passion for these cars runs deep, and so does his technical knowledge.
This conversation was all about the machines — from his earliest Subaru builds to what he considers the best engines, platforms, and design choices that make these cars such a blast to own and modify.
Beating on Brats and Building Monsters
Dan’s first real Subaru experience wasn’t exactly gentle.
He laughed when he told me about a Subaru Brat that a friend gave him years ago. “He owed me a little bit of money and offered it as payment, and I took it,” he said. “At that age, when you receive a free car, the rules are you have to destroy it.”
He and his brother spent days thrashing it in the woods of Northern California, launching it off old motocross jumps, rolling it over, and trying to make it die. “We couldn’t,” Dan said. “I had a broken wrist and a broken nose, and the Subaru still ran.”
That moment stuck with him. “I remember walking away from that situation with the understanding that Subaru builds one hell of a car,” he said.
That first experience lit the spark for what became a lifelong obsession with Subaru durability and design.
Below you can see one of Dan’s early Loyale monster builds:
The 91 Legacy Wagon That Refused to Quit
Before Whiskey Row Automotive existed, Dan was managing a Subaru-specific shop in Portland when he came across what would become one of his most iconic builds, a 1991 Legacy Wagon. The owners were planning to retire it.
“They told me it had 342,000 miles on it and had met all of its goals,” Dan said. “I bought it from them, put a three-inch lift on it, added some General Grabber all-terrains, and swapped in a limited slip diff out of a Legacy Turbo. That became my daily driver.”
He drove that car for years, racking up more than 427,000 miles before the transmission began to protest. The window motors got tired, and the CD player gave out. But even then, the car refused to give up.
When he eventually bought a new Outback in 2015, Dan and his brother decided to transform the old Legacy into something completely different, a full-blown rock crawler.
Turning a Legacy Into a Rock Crawler
“I bought a Toyota pickup that had already been turned into a crawler,” he said. “The plan was to solid-axle swap the Legacy, do dual transfer cases, and run some 33s or 35s.”
Like every great project, it snowballed. Dan ended up running full-width Toyota axles from an FJ62 and Tacoma, handmade front springs using a mix of three vehicles, and a custom-built bellhousing adapter that let him mate the Subaru EJ engine to a Toyota W56 five-speed transmission.
That transmission opened the door to something truly wild: Marlin Crawler dual transfer cases.
“The gear ratio is somewhere around 225 to 1,” he said. “It’s been a while since I’ve calculated that, but that sounds about right.”
The car ran on 39-inch Toyos for a while before he downsized to 37s. “They fit the car better,” he said. “It has a ridiculous amount of wheel travel, and I can get the tires into the body pretty easily.”
What’s even more impressive is that the car still drives like a Subaru. “It’ll cruise comfortably at 75 miles an hour,” Dan said. “It still gets 20 or 21 miles per gallon.”
When he mentioned that, I just shook my head. A street-legal rock crawler Legacy that gets 20 mpg? Unreal.
Why He Kept the Subaru Soul
Most people would have taken the easy route and set that old Legacy body on a full Toyota frame, but not Dan. “It would have been very easy to set it onto the chassis of the Toyota I bought,” he said. “But I didn’t want to do that for a couple of reasons. I don’t think it requires any skill to do that.”
Instead, he kept it all Subaru, just heavily modified.
“I wanted the car to be as low to the ground as possible,” he said. “With the 39-inch tires, she had a 23-inch belly height. In the rock-crawler world, that’s very low.”
That low center of gravity wasn’t just a performance choice, it was part of his philosophy. “I grew up in Lake Tahoe and spent my teenage years on the Rubicon Trail,” Dan said. “We learned that center of gravity means something. I wanted the car to be low and capable so it would be stable in off-camber situations.”
That kind of approach, building within the limits of a platform rather than working around it, is exactly what makes the Subaru community so interesting.
The Subaru Parts Bin Advantage: Major Interchangeability
Throughout the conversation, we kept circling back to one of Subaru’s most unique strengths: interchangeability. Dan explained it perfectly.
“The Legacy, the Outback, the Forester, and the Impreza, they’re all the same car,” he said. “Everything’s interchangeable. You could have a lifted 2.5RS or slam your Forester. Interchangeability makes these things fun and easy.”
He told me about swapping starters between generations that were more than a decade apart. “My brother’s 1994 Legacy starter went out, and I told him to pull one from his 2007 Outback,” he said. “They literally had the same part number. Bolted right in.”
That kind of consistency is what allows the Subaru platform to evolve without losing its identity. “Their bellhousing pattern hasn’t changed in decades,” Dan said. “I could bolt the transmission from my 2025 to my 1991, and it would fit.”
It’s that kind of backward compatibility that keeps older Subarus alive and affordable long after other manufacturers would have rendered them obsolete.
The STI and Its Overlooked Engineering
When I asked Dan about the best Subaru ever made, his answer came without hesitation.
“If you’re looking for something fast and relatively reliable, the early STIs are amazing cars,” he said. “They had a lot of technology that people don’t appreciate, methanol injection, water sprayers on the intercoolers, aluminum control arms, driver-controlled center differentials, limited slips front and rear, and some even came with Bilstein struts.”
We got into the details of the 2004 STI, the first model year to hit the U.S. “It was significantly wider than the WRX,” Dan said. “It had a six-speed transmission with a driver-controlled center diff, while the WRX had the five-speed made of glass. The STI also had inverted dampers from the factory.”
He explained the difference. “On the WRX, the main body of the shock is at wheel level and the shaft is at the top. On the STI, it’s inverted and much larger. Everything’s hidden inside the strut body. That’s rally pedigree being trickled down to the street.”
For anyone who’s ever questioned why STI parts cost more, that’s the answer. Subaru put real motorsport hardware into those cars.
Why Subaru Keeps It Simple
Dan has worked on everything from Toyotas to Ferraris, but he keeps coming back to Subaru for one big reason: they don’t overcomplicate things.
He told a story about the Legacy he and his brother flipped for tacos and whiskey that ended up surviving for seven years as a daily driver. Even when the transmission died, they recycled nearly every part, the engine went into another car, the suspension into another build, and the lift kit still hangs in his shop.
“Subarus don’t die,” he said. “They just change shape.”
That philosophy carries through all his builds. He loves that Subaru has stayed true to a core design. “They find something that works and modify it slightly to meet parameters,” he said. “They’ve been consistent. It’s made them easy to work on and cheap to keep on the road.”
EJ22: The Peak of Subaru Reliability
Ask Dan to pick his favorite Subaru engine and he doesn’t hesitate. “The Phase 1 EJ22 is hands down probably the most reliable internal combustion engine I’ve had my hands on,” he said.
He compared it to Toyota’s legendary 22R engine. “The 20R and 22R are solid, but they don’t make anywhere near the power of the EJ22 and they’re not as smooth,” he said. “All things considered, I’d prefer the EJ22 over anything.”
He’s had dozens of them. “All of them were EJ22-equipped, except for the RS in my garage right now,” he said. “Obviously, same architecture, just a bit more induction power.”
That kind of praise means something coming from someone who’s rebuilt and raced everything.
Subaru’s Forgotten World Record
One of my favorite moments from our talk was when Dan mentioned an endurance record I’d never even heard of.
“In 1989, Subaru sent four first-generation Legacies to the Nissan test track in Maricopa, Arizona,” he said. “They put 100,000 kilometers on them in 18 and a half days, with an average speed of 137 miles an hour. The only time they stopped was to change drivers, fuel up, and change oil.”
The feat was so impressive that Subaru created a limited-edition Legacy RS-RA to commemorate it, the “RA” literally stood for “Record Attempt.” “We never got them here in the States,” Dan said. “They were sold in Japan, Australia, and a few other markets. They’re absurdly rare.”
It’s one of those forgotten chapters in Subaru’s history that perfectly sums up their approach: quiet excellence that most people overlook.
The Evolution of the Subaru Engine
As much as Dan loves the older stuff, he doesn’t dismiss modern Subarus. “The FA and FB engines are just a progression of the EJ,” he said. “They’ve refined a lot of things. There are some new challenges, but that’s true for every manufacturer trying to meet emissions standards.”
He pointed out that horsepower and fuel economy now have to coexist, and that’s changed the design game. “The FB is a great engine,” he said. “If you take care of it, it’ll take care of you. There’s no reason an FB engine that’s properly maintained can’t exceed half a million miles.”
As for the CVT transmissions that so many enthusiasts love to hate, Dan’s take was measured. He doesn’t prefer them for performance builds, but he recognizes their place in Subaru’s lineup. The company has always adapted its designs to what people actually need.
Built to Be Modified
One of the biggest takeaways from our talk was just how intentionally flexible Subaru’s engineering really is.
“I don’t know that Subaru intended to make everything interchangeable,” Dan said. “I think they did it as a cost-cutting measure, but it has benefited the enthusiast enormously.”
That accidental gift is what lets people like Dan do what they do, mixing and matching parts across decades of vehicles, combining OEM reliability with creative builds that still feel like Subarus.
“They’re good cars for beginners to get their feet wet and learn on,” he said. “They’re also capable enough for experienced builders to push limits.”
He’s right. Whether you’re lifting a Crosstrek for camping trips or engineering a 37-inch-tired Legacy crawler with Toyota dual cases, you’re still working within the same DNA that made Dan fall in love with the Brat all those years ago.
After spending hours talking to Dan, it’s clear that his respect for Subaru runs deeper than brand loyalty. He understands how these cars are built, why they last, and what makes them fun to tinker with.
“The thing about Subarus,” he said, “is that everything works together. If you do your homework and build it right, it’ll do whatever you want it to do.”
From an old Brat surviving forest jumps to a modern Legacy keeping up with Land Cruisers, his stories prove what most of us already know: Subaru’s greatest strength isn’t just all-wheel drive, it’s the people who see what these cars are capable of and keep finding new ways to prove it.