{"id":56746,"date":"2025-06-13T01:00:36","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T05:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=56746"},"modified":"2025-06-12T09:46:32","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T13:46:32","slug":"qotd-the-subaru-brat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/06\/13\/qotd-the-subaru-brat\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The Subaru BRAT"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Imagine, if you can, a truck with factory-mounted seats in the bed \u2014 and spotlights the size of a 747’s landing lights mounted on its T-topped roof.<\/p>\n

If you know this truck, you also know why it’s no longer available.<\/p>\n

Such fun things are no longer allowed<\/em>.<\/p>\n

They are not saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafe!<\/em> “Moms” are “concerned”!<\/p>\n

But in 1977, the Safety Cult \u2014 which ended such fun things \u2014 was still a backwater aberration, like dancing with rattlesnakes \u2014 and most people still esteemed fun over fear. There were roofless Broncos and K5 Blazers \u2014 and cars<\/em> with beds<\/em>.<\/p>\n

You could buy all kinds of different stuff back when America was still a fairly free country \u2014 and the Subaru BRAT was as different as it got.<\/p>\n

BRAT \u2014 all caps \u2014 was short for Bi-Drive Recreational All-Terrain Transporter<\/em>. It was superficially similar to other small import pickups of the ’70s, such as the Datsun 620 and similar models from Toyota (SR5), Mazda (B210), and Chevy (via Isuzu) Luv.<\/p>\n

But unlike them, it was a four seater \u2014 with two of the four in the bed, facing the other<\/em> way. The seats were made of all-weather plastic and far from the most comfortable \u2014 but the view was spectacular. Watching the world recede<\/em> as you progressed is another one of many freedoms denied today in the name of “safety”.<\/p>\n

Subaru wasn’t “unconcerned” about “safety”. Grab handles \u2014 to keep passengers from bouncing out of the bed \u2014 were<\/em> included. Though holding onto them made it harder to reach for a cold one in the cooler. That was another<\/em> fun thing people did in pickups back in the day \u2014 before the Safety Cult put the kibosh on that, too.<\/p>\n

The seats were actually a dodge \u2014 of a federal fatwa<\/em> known as the “chicken tax”, which was a retaliatory tariff of 25 percent applied to import-brand pickups manufactured outside the United States as tit-for-tat for tariffs applied by foreign countries to American chicken<\/em> exported outside the United States.<\/p>\n

The “chicken tax” hit trucks with just two seats \u2014 at the time almost exclusively the small import models, which didn’t offer the extended and crew cab configurations that are commonplace today.<\/p>\n

By adding the extra seats in the bed, BRAT qualified as a passenger vehicle<\/em> rather than a “light truck”, and thus Subaru evaded the chicken tax on a happy technicality \u2014 and was also able to sell the BRAT for less<\/em> than two-seater rivals that had the cost of the tax folded into their MSRP.<\/p>\n

Eric Peters, “Doomed: Subaru BRAT (1977-87)”, The American Spectator<\/em><\/a>, 2020-04-26.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine, if you can, a truck with factory-mounted seats in the bed \u2014 and spotlights the size of a 747’s landing lights mounted on its T-topped roof. If you know this truck, you also know why it’s no longer available. Such fun things are no longer allowed. They are not saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafe! “Moms” are “concerned”! But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,84,7,24,41,13],"tags":[263,111,1185,118],"class_list":["post-56746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-government","category-history","category-japan","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-1970s","tag-cars","tag-tariffs","tag-taxes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-eLg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56746"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96079,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56746\/revisions\/96079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}