Okay, you may all berate me for being a total dumbarse noob. But I am, so I do indeed deserve it. I'm a VW fan (ducks) but am contemplating ditching my beloved Jetta 1.8T in favour of a WRX wagon. Actually, at this point, not really contemplating it, I'll likely be doing it.

 

The question I have is about emissions. Currently I live in Washington DC, but the new wifey and I will be moving to San Francisco in the coming 2-3 months. My Jetta is CA emissions ready, so was wondering if someone could chime in with info about Subaru's emissions policies on their cars? Reason I ask, is that I can find an 03-04 WRX wagon here for about $2k less than I'd pay for it out west, so what we'd like to do is buy here, load her up, and drive her cross country (not out of necessity, just think it'd be cool to drive and camp at National Parks along the way) but obviously this gets shot in the backside if we get to CA and discover the car'll need major work to get it registered out there.

 

Help!

As long as the X is pretty stock you won't have a thing in the world to worry about.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Subie Wagons, especially the WRX wagon!

 

The stock 02'sh WRX's meet the LEV(Low Emissions Vehicle) standards. However, a popular modification involves dropping one of the 3 (yes, THREE) catalytic converters and monkeying around with the downpipe/exhaust so be careful and count the cats before you buy...

Yeah, the cat in the downpipe will be the easiest to tell. You pretty much have to cut the pipe apart to get to it.

I have seen some WRX s cheap out here,picked up my 02 for $6000,and saw a couple outher 1 s in LA for around $7000.When you put the down pipe on just keep the the old 1 for when its time to smog,its easy to change.