5k: 1978 Subaru Brat Custom
The Subaru Brat was the closest thing to a Japanese El Camino available for sale in the United States and Subaru did sell quite a few of them from 1978 through 1993. They were quite useful little off-roaders and were owned by a few celebrities, most notably Ronald Reagan and Master Rex Kwon Do from Napoleon Dynamite. This 1978 Subaru Brat with custom pickup bed is for sale in North Hollywood, CA for $5500 asking via craiglist.
This sky blue Brat is in remarkably nice cosmetic shape given its conversion of stake-side flatbed in the back that is best suited to landscaper hauling duties. The name Brat is an acronym for Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter and they have a reputation for being reliable and cheap transportation for folks with light-off-roading needs.
The inside of this 2-seat Brat looks in fair condition, not perfect, but not needing much work to just get in and drive. This Brat is powered by a Subaru EA-71 1.6 liter inline flat 4 cylinder gasoline engine putting out 67 horsepower into a 4 speed manual transmission and into all 4 wheels. You’ll know its a flat-4 when you hear the brat-brat-brat noise coming down the street…
This Brat has a nice set of color matched wheels and it would be nice to have some closeup shots of the paint job and some more descriptions – is it original paint or a recent respray? While we miss the sweet sloped B-pillar shape of an original Brat, we can understand how useful it would be to have this huge bed in the back.
See another sweet Brat-up for sale? email us here: tips@dailyturismo.com
Inline-4? Most definitely a blatty flat-4 in this Brat. The flat bed, on the other hand, is ridiculous. I'm just picturing everything flying out at the first speed bump.
Oops -typo! Fixed it! Brat-brat-brat! Also -to properly outfit this badboy to drive 55mph in the fast lane in CA, it needs a ladder rack.
The best possible modification for this "Bart" would be to add a complete aircooled VW drivetrain in the rear, and delete the driveshaft from the Subie transaxle. Then you get twin-flat-4 power, no need to run extra cooling lines to the front, and get "through the road" AWD which can work just dandy as long as at least one trans is an automatic.
Flat 8 flatbed Bart!
~ that's just crazy…. hmmmmm. let's solicit some sponsors and find out if it's crazy enough!