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The Subaru Performance Tuning sponsored team of Easy Street Motorsports made two major announcements at the SEMA show. Principal team owner, driver, and sometimes actor Ali Afshar debuted his new Bob Norwood produced Modified class Subaru WRX set to run the NHRA and NDRA series next year. Keeping the driveline an all-wheel was a key challenge and Norwood devised a unique torque splitting setup that will still allow the car to get its estimated 1,200 hp to the ground efficiently at all four corners.

Filling the vacancy in their street-tired WRX was the goal of their Maximum Velocity female driver search and the winner was announced at the show. 18-year old Julie Steppan was announced as the lucky winner of a fully paid ride for the 2005 season to campaign the 9-sec WRX. Driving it should be no problem as the Grand Prairie, TX native has grown up around drag racing since she was two weeks old and has competed in it since she was nine. Most recently, she was piloting dragsters to 8-seconds at 163 mph while attending college to be a schoolteacher.