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It's an ultra-rad, rally-ready blast from the past, with an output of 862 horsepower.

From Leone with love comes the station wagon from which Travis Pastrana and Hoonigan’s wild racer was born. We’re talking about the Subaru Leone (Italian; lion) compact car, which the Japanese automobile manufacturer Subaru produced from 1971 to 1994. It was a replacement model for the comparatively short-lived Subaru 1000, produced from 1966 to 1969. Leone used to be Subaru's flagship model before the arrival of the Subaru Legacy in 1989.

Notably, Leone was for many years the Japanese automaker’s only export in markets where the smaller Kei-class cars didn’t meet local regulations. As a result, big markets like Australia, Europe, and North America got them in trim levels that include the DL, GL, GLF, GLF5, GL-10, and RX. All the 'Ls' are why the car is commonly known as Subaru GL or the L Series.

In June 2022, the duo of Pastrana and Hoonigan, in partnership with Subaru Motorsports USA, unveiled a 1983 Subaru GL station wagon, tuned and touted to “tear up the Gymkhana.” Here's all the detail you need to know about Pastrana, Hoonigan, Gymkhana, and the incredible custom ‘Family Huckster’ built to tear things apart at the daredevil racing events.

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Since we’re talking about the 1983 Subaru GL that Pastrana transformed into an 862bhp station wagon, it's only fair to introduce the guy and his partners who gave the cheetah its limbs.

Travis Alan Pastrana is a 39-year-old American career motorsports competitor and stunt performer. He has won multiple championships and X Games gold medals in several disciplines, including supercross, motocross, freestyle motocross, and rally racing. With a reported net worth of $25 million, according to Celebrity Net worth, Pastrana has earned his stripes in extreme sports.

Pastrana’s partner in crime, the Hoonigan, is a motor racing team that competes in the American Rally Association, fielding a Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC car for Ken Block. Gymkhana is a viral unscripted 8-episode video series with Ken Block, featuring timed and/or speed racing events and boasting over 550 million views. Gymkhana racing typically features all sorts of obstacles, not limited to barrels, cones, and tires, designed to test both the driver's and the vehicle's capability.

That said, let’s revisit the '80s station wagon that morphed into the built-for-speed Family Huckster. The 1983 Subaru GL is a 4-door station wagon with an original MSRP of $7,729 (approximately $22,078 in today's money). One look at the car, and you appreciate why it was Pastrana’s preferred speed machine.

Even so, the car was not built as a purebred rally racer, which informs its standard FWD with available 4WD; an auxiliary drive system Subaru termed On-Demand 4WD. In other words, the front wheels did all the pulling like any other Subaru on the everyday roads. However, at showtime, the driver can unleash the monster by keeping the front wheel straight, releasing the clutch, and pulling the on-demand lever back a notch at a time, all the way to the highest level.

If the inclemency got too much or the terrain suddenly started to slope, another pull will noiselessly multiply the overall transmission ratios to provide a 46% gear reduction. That’s what you might call a hill holder. The car is 168.7 inches long, and it's powered by a 1.8-liter 4-cylinder OHC, carburetor, and boxer engine. It could make 73 horses at 4,400 rpm and 94 lb-ft of torque at 2,400 rpm.

Fuel economy was 24/30 MPG for city and highway driving. Ultimately, Pastrana and his cronies managed to transform this otherwise humble roadcar into a rad mountain Leone to run up the hill at the Goodwood Festival of Speed without breaking a sweat.

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So, Pastrana did race his new Subaru GL Family Huckster at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, but that was after he'd crashed his Subaru WRX STI on the short forest stage, damaging the car's rollcage, and preventing him and Subaru Motorsports USA from further participating on the rally stage for the rest of the event that weekend.

Travis Pastrana unveiled his new Family Huckster earlier this year, but he kept the specifications a secret. It was a tuned 1983 Subaru GL designed in collaboration with Hoonigan and Subaru Motorsport USA and built by Subaru’s U.S. motorsport partner Vermont SportsCar. However, the cat was let out of the bag just days before the much-anticipated Goodwood event, leaving fans and enthusiasts stunned by the ultra-rad, rally-ready blast from the past, packing a turbocharged flat-4 motor tied to a 6-speed sequential gearbox and capable of 862 horsepower.

Of course, it’s AWD. It features a Championship-spec suspension system and with a custom tubular space frame chassis supporting the carbon fiber body. The interior painstakingly mirrors the original thing, complete with an original 1983 GL radio and a 12-inch digital instrument cluster with a display programmed to look like a 1980s Subaru digital cluster, all in a recreated blue carbon fiber dashboard that mimics the look of the stock GL.

The Family Huckster incorporated aerodynamic elements of the one-off Subaru WRX Airslayer, which Pastrana had driven to glory in the Gymkhana 2020 and the 2021 Mt Washington Hill Climb. That means Family Huckster borrowed the Airslayer’s active rear wing and movable aerodynamic flaps on the front and rear, not to talk of the carbon fiber roof rack that directs air to the rear-mounted radiator via a NACA duct in the roof. These features were definitely helpful, considering the wagon's boxy shape.

“The '83 wagon flies about as well as you would imagine... kind of like a brick," Pastrana said in a statement. "This makes the jumps way more sketchy but also more entertaining and less predictable. The Family Huckster is without a doubt my all-time favorite vehicle to drive." Prepare to see the Family Huckster in action again in the Hoonigan's Gymkhana video series later this year.

Philip Uwaoma, this bearded black male from Nigeria, is fast approaching two million words in articles published on various websites, including toylist.com, rehabaid.com, and autoquarterly.com. After not getting credit for his work on Auto Quarterly, Philip is now convinced that ghostwriting sucks. He has no dog, no wife- yet- and he loves Rolls Royce a little too much.