2002 Subaru Impreza WRX

There's something most talented drivers have in common: they started either in the dirt or on the ice. Greats like Speed World Challenge champ Peter Cunningham, drift monkey Samuel Hubinette and scores of pro-level heroes cut their teeth and dialed in their butts on amateur ice rinks where car control instincts are at their extremes.

Naturally, in our quest to learn driving fundamentals in any form, we had to forsake sunny California for the cold wasteland of Quebec to try North American ice racing at its best. We tagged along with Continental Tire's Arctic Blast winter tire program to this defiantly French-loving province and poached a ride at the Challenge sur Glace in Sherbrooke, part of the Challenge Canada series, sponsored by, you guessed it, Continental. Call it hometown ice racing, but you'll see motorcycles, quads, cars and horse-and-buggy races. And anything goes, from amateur rally jockeys to open-class, all-wheel-drive, mid-engine supercars, the F1s of the ice racing world.

Le carWrangling seat time with random strangers was easier than expected. While poking around the paddocks, we were approached by privateer rally jock Sylvain Erickson and his crew from Lachute Performance, whose after-work obsession-a 2002 Impreza WRX-provided the chariot for our crash course in ice dynamics. The beauty of the car is its simplicity, its beater rally roots. Anyone with some cash and elbow grease can replicate this machine and set out for hours of snow-berm-destroying fun. Normally campaigned in Canadian rallies, the WRX has been gutted, lightened and caged, running with all the hardware of an all-purpose rally car, including an intake restrictor (not required for the Challenge Canada series), anti-lag and a programmable DCCD computer. Ice racing is what Erickson and his crew does just for the hell of it.

To make the car more dirt/snow/ice-friendly, the original EJ20 engine was swapped out for a custom-built EJ22 (from a 1992 Legacy) with a 2.5-liter crank and 10.5:1-compression CP pistons to obtain the massive torque desired when power is capped by a restrictor. Final displacement was 2355cc and put down over 400lb-ft of torque at only 19psi. But the engine didn't last, not from rallying either. In a tragic warehouse fire, Erickson's masterpiece ended life as a puddle of aluminum and steel.

Undeterred, Erickson settled on a temporary engine, taken from a Japanese-model 2006 STI Spec C. He also threw in the driveline and whatever else could be scavenged from the donor car, including hubs, brakes, suspension, axles and six-speed DCCD transmission. Making the most of rally air restriction limitations, Erickson modified the stock exhaust manifold to accommodate a rotated-mount turbo, which allows for easier servicing between stages as well as more room to fit the 34mm compressor inlet restrictor plate. Because FIA rules only stipulate the restrictor plate's final diameter, thickness and placement, rally jocks get creative and machine large venturi or trumpets leading up to the restrictor. This accelerates air going into the turbo and, according to them, helps squeeze every little bit of torque and power from the asphyxiated engines.

For ice duty, Erickson's team only changes the rolling stock to some spec, super-skinny, studded Continental IceRacingContact 3 tires, mounted on 16x4.5 wheels. The 24-way independent rebound, high- and low-speed compression-adjustable Proflex rally coilovers have the same settings for dirt, gravel and mud. They don't even bother to pull off the gravel-stage brake pads or the 34mm restrictor-which caps output of the 2.0-liter Spec C engine to 230 wheel-hp. Not the most competitive setup, but definitely the lowest-energy path to snowbound fun.