Which may quite possibly be the single longest post title in the history of Car Lust (I have personally directed several of our crack team of automotive researchers to drop everything they're doing -- mostly measuring the wheels on Hafner's various automobiles over and over -- to check this out). In the meantime, we have here a little vehicle that has amused me greatly over the years, not only with its diminutive size compared to other big bad-ass 'utes but by its being named after a sausage.

I saw most of these in the wild back in the late '70s in Wisconsin which had, for some unfathomable reason (which the crack team of researchers will surely get to investigating next) a rather high concentration of Subarus. And BRATs. Well, and brats, too. Frankly, at the time I never gave them a whole lot of thought, except maybe to snigger at the name and wonder how cool it would be to ride in the jump seats in the back. Otherwise, they mostly slipped under my radar until fairly recently, although you still do occasionally see them bouncing around the Seattle area (another hotbed of Subaru-dom).

I suppose if the El Camino is the Steve McQueen of cars, the BRAT would be the. . . .Ronald Reagan? There is a connection there which we shall see shortly. While this may not be the longest post in the history of Car Lust, it certainly is the. . . .wurst.

The BRAT is a descendant of the Subaru Leone which debuted in the US in 1971. "Leone," for those with an interest, is Italian for 'lion' and one can certainly see the resemblance:

"Look at me, I'm a lion! I'm mean and fierce! MROW!"

The Leone -- technically known as the L-Series here in the US -- is probably a story in and of itself so I shan't go into it much here, except to reiterate once again that, having one sitting under a cover a few blocks from my house, I really ought to be called the Car Lust Nexus.

Subaru may have gotten off on the wrong foot in the US with its 360, admirably summarized by our own CTD'sO ("It's cheap and ugly!"). With its suicide doors and urine sample fuel delivery system (check the video at the link), it never made much of a splash. Undeterred, Subaru introduced the Leone line starting in 1971 with a hardtop 2-door followed quickly by a 4-door sedan, 2-door pickup truck, and station wagon, this latter available in 4WD starting in 1974 (as a '75). The wagon was front-drive but had 4WD as an option, which may actually explain their apparent popularity around Wisconsin (i.e., snow) and had 4-banger engines ranging from 1.2-1.6L.

In 1977, however, they modified the station wagon to be a new pickup-like vehicle they called the BRAT. The name was derived as you see above from several features of the vehicle, most of which make fairly obvious sense -- "Recreational" and "Transporter" for example -- although the "Bi-drive" part  refers to the full-time front-drive switchable on-the-fly to single-range AWD. Initially, it used the 1.6L "EA-71" engine, which had its roots in 1966 with the 977 cc EA-52 used in the 1000 and had an aluminum block and heads. By 1977 the EA had enlarged to 1595 cc (~1.6L) and was rated at 67 bhp. After the 1980 model year they switched to a slightly larger 1.8L EA-81 that upped output somewhat to 73 bhp.

Lookswise, it's hard to fault the BRAT; I wouldn't say it's exactly pleasing to the eye, although it doesn't look as awkward (to my eyes) as Dodge's later effort along these lines or the similarly odd-looking (to my eyes) VW Caddy.To me, it actually looks like something of a rally car with its slightly sloping stance and higher back end. Certainly not a load hauler, but definitely something you could easily see tearing around back roads looking for a deserted beach somewhere.

Which brings us to the most goofily endearing feature of the BRAT: those odd little jump seats in the back which led to Autotrader deeming it one of its top ten scariest cars. It was not, in fact, a serious attempt at increasing the passenger capacity of the vehicle, but a way to get around the little-known. . . .Chicken Tax. Interestingly, prior to WWII most chicken raising operations in the US were largely backyard affairs devoted to producing eggs rather than meat, which was considered a by-product of egg production. Later in the 1940s, various technologies developed -- accurate sexing of chicks, disease control, etc. -- that allowed larger-scale egg and chick-producing operations to come into being, and that fundamentally changed the American meat diet. Prior to that time, chicken had been something of a rarity; pork and beef were the mainstays of the American meat diet. Once chicken became a large-scale production activity, prices began to drop and consumption increased. And once producers learned how to adequately freeze chicken for shipment, it could be sold worldwide.

And it was, notably to Europe where chicken remained something of a delicacy and commanded high prices. The new supply of cheap American (and probably vastly inferior and downright gauche, in their view) chicken didn't sit well with European farmers, and around 1961 Europe slapped import tariffs on foreign chicken. The US soon retaliated and in December of 1963 (after only two weeks in office) the Johnson administration put a 25% import tariff of its own on several products, notably potato starch, dextrin, brandy. . . .and light trucks. The latter was principally aimed at Germany and VW's increasingly popular vans, classifying them as light trucks and thus covered under the tariff.

You may think of this as ancient history, but it really isn't: The Chicken Tax is still in place, although all but the light truck has since been dropped from the law. Even today Ford imports all of its Transit Connect vans from Turkey, equipping them as passenger vehicles and then stripping them clean and turning them back into commercial vehicles.

Anyhow, back to the BRAT. Rather than accepting the 25% surcharge on their little "trucks," Subaru (actually Fuji Heavy Industries, their parent company) decided to weld in a couple of rear-facing seats in the bed, along with some carpeting, and call it a passenger vehicle. I imagine some of these were used, but being made out of plastic -- no cushion -- with a couple of handles to. . .well, I'm not sure what, but they were undoubtedly not the most comfortable seats one could want. They could be had with 5-point belts so you probably ran little risk of bouncing out, though a rollover could certainly present some difficulties. At any rate, these were discontinued after 1985.

Oh yes, Ronald Reagan. Subaru had been testing their BRATs out in the deserts of California when Richard Allen, an advisor to Reagan, arranged through a friend to have one of the test cars sent for additional field testing to Reagan at his Rancho del Cielo property near Santa Barbara, CA. It was to be used as normal with the only stipulation being that he file a semi-annual report on the car. Although he did follow through and sent at least a couple of reports in, upon winning the White House in 1980, Reagan didn't see much of the little BRAT. While he supposedly quite liked the little truck/passenger car, rumor hath it that to be seen with a Japanese vehicle at the time wouldn't have been a politically astute move, so one rarely, if ever, sees any photos of The Gipper and the BRAT. Nevertheless, the Reagan BRAT was used on the ranch for quite a few years, eventually being sold off and going through a few hands before winding up back at the ranch -- both the ranch and the car were purchased by the Young America's Foundation. The car, with Allen's assistance and further help from Subaru of America, was eventually restored to like-new condition and resides at the ranch, though its working days are quite over.

Production lasted until 1987 (at least in the US) when it was discontinued. In concept at least, the idea was resurrected in 2002 (model year 2003) as the Baja, this time a modified Legacy/Outback, though manufactured in Indiana this time, so no jump seats. The design only lasted for three years, showing once again that the 'ute remains of limited popularity here. In the long run, I suppose it didn't have much of an impact, although it retains a small but devoted following. I'm not certain that I'd go out and buy one (already hit Craig's List!), although I'd not refuse it if someone decided one needed a good home; were I so inclined I'd snag a Baja or a nice classic El Camino or Ranchero myself (although come to think of it, it'd make a dandy little field vehicle, hmmmm). I like knowing they're still around though, they remind me of my younger days of having a vehicle that was just plain fun and relatively cheap to operate. Kudos to all those who preserve these.

But I will continue to pronounce it like the sausage.

--Anthony Cagle

Credits: The top classic BRAT ad is from Jalopnik's Reagan BRAT page and the Leone is from Wikipedia. Reagan's restored BRAT is from the JapaneseNostalgicCar.com site. The photo showing the rear seats is from Columbus Underground. The ad copy comes from ProductionCars.com and the white BRAT is from Subaru's web-based magazine, Subaru Drive, and is the first BRAT to roll off the production line.