i was looking at a red 5 speed the other day. it had 109,000 miles on it. other than needing a set of tires it looked great . it's a private owner. lets assume that it's got the original timing belt and clutch and they will be needing replaced in the near future. their asking $7,400. is this a fair price. is it new enough to not have head gasket problems? any other known problems. i'm looking for a 04-05. i was also considering a wrx of the same year. i always wanted a turbo

That's probably not too bad. Yes I believe the headgasket issue has been resolved by that MY.

We still get quite a few 04 2.5's with the HG plauge....We have even started seeing some of the 05's start to develop HG leaks....Cant hurt to take a peek...

how about the turbo engines. i thought i seen somwhere that the turbo's don't blow head gaskets like the n/a's do. but i could be wrong.

No, the turbos didn't seem to have the headgasket issues that the non-turbos did.

+1^..needless to say you get the kids who run there WRX into the ground with 150k on it and blow a HG...