Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Subaru BRAT


Officially known as the Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter (BRAT), the 1978 Subaru model successfully skirted a 1963 tariff for small, foreign-built pickup trucks, as it came with a pair of rear-facing arcade game plastic bucket seats in the truck bed.


Those are not headrests, they are backrests. Unless you are 4 feet tall.

These were welded in, and THAT made this a passenger car, NOT a truck. See? Loophole.

The loophole in the Chicken Tax regulation allowing such seats was quickly closed, but not before thousands of these trucks were sold in the United States. The Chicken Tax was a 25% tax on trucks, potato starch, dextrin, and brandy.

Odd design feature, it's front wheel drive, but has a shifter to engage the all wheel drive.... and the spare tire is under the hood, over the engine, baking since installed.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnolzTQ1zXI
https://www.hagerty.com/articles-videos/articles/2019/07/15/3-off-road-cars-that-would-never-be-made-today

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