Full Answer
The community pattern is real and worth understanding: new owners get steered toward sound and feel mods first, because those deliver maximum enjoyment with minimum risk. Power mods drag tuning and warranty questions behind them. That instinct is correct, and it can be made more specific.
Here is the ranked list of what actually delivers on a stock VB.
**Tires.** Not a modification in the fun sense, and the single biggest improvement available. Every input reaches the road through four contact patches, and the VB hides its traction limit because all-wheel drive puts power down well in a straight line. Owners conclude their tires are fine and then find the limit in a wet corner. A quality summer tire changes braking, cornering and acceleration at once - no other purchase does all three.
**Shifter bushings.** Roughly $25 to $40. Subaru uses rubber bushings in the shift linkage to isolate transmission noise, and rubber deflects under load, so part of your hand movement squashes rubber rather than moving the selector. Solid brass removes that vagueness. You touch the shifter on every gear change of every drive, which is why this is the best value per dollar on the car.
**A rear sway bar.** Roughly $240, an afternoon, no alignment needed. The VB understeers by design; stiffening the rear neutralises that push and makes the car turn in far more willingly.
**A shift stop**, around $35 to $51, if the end of each shift feels loose.
**An exhaust**, if you want the car to sound different. Buy it knowingly as a sound modification - a cat-back on a stock turbo makes essentially no power, and expecting horsepower from one is the most common early regret on this platform.
What to avoid first: an intake, which needs a tune to be safe if it has an oversized MAF housing, and any part bought because a build thread made it look like the obvious next step.
The useful framing is to decide whether you want sound, feel, grip or power before you buy anything. Those are four different shopping lists, and most first-mod disappointment comes from buying off the wrong one.
Last updated 3/26/2026