Junkyard Find: 1982 Subaru BRAT

by Murilee Martin

February 5th, 2014 3:34 AM

With so many old Subarus in Denver wrecking yards, I do run across the occasional BRAT. We’ve seen this ’79 and this very rare Sawzall Edition ’86 so far in this series, and today we’ll be looking at a well-used ’82 that still has the very rare lawsuit-inducing jumpseats in the back.

Yes, those Chicken Tax-skirting jumpseats that made the BRAT, legally speaking, a car instead of a truck were loose in the bed of this Subaru when I found it a couple weeks back.

I thought about buying the seats for my Dodge A100 van, but they’re missing the headrests and one of the grab handles, plus the floor-mounting brackets were beat to hell.

These cars rusted very quickly, though Colorado’s arid climate spared this one from full-on Michigan-grade cancer.

Nice BRATs are worth quite a bit these days. Thrashed ones are worth scrap value.

Strangely, I saw three vehicles with variations on this sticker during this trip to the junkyard. There’s meaning there somewhere.

#1980s #1982 #1982SubaruBRAT #4wd #AWD #Brat #ChickenTax #DownOnTheJunkyard #Junkyard #JunkyardFind #Subaru #Malaise #MalaiseEra #SubaruBrat

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April on Feb 05, 2014

I had two of this era Subie. A 76' GF hardtop and a 78 two-door coupe. 5-speeds. Both pale yellow with some nice red primer in places. They were fun. I miss them.

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Big_gms on Feb 06, 2014

Never owned or driven one, but I've crossed paths with a couple Brats. When I was in kindergarten, my teacher had one. That was in 1979-80. The other one I crossed paths with was under very unpleasant circumstances: a car accident. I was turning onto a side road in my 1973 Chevy Caprice, when my car began to slide sideways on the snow. Next thing I know, bang! I was hit in the passenger side rear quarter panel and spun around. The vehicle that hit me was a Subaru Brat. My Caprice looked bad, but was still driveable; the Brat was totaled...that was in December 1990.

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