Junkyard Find: 1979 Subaru BRAT

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

Where I live (Denver), wrecking yards overflow with old Subarus. I walk past junked early-80s Leones (or GLs or whatever Subaru’s confusing naming conventions of the era were) all the time, but I’ll always stop and photograph a BRAT. So far in this series, the BRAT roster includes this ’79, this ’84, this ’82, and this Sawzall-converted ’86. Last week, I spotted another example, and it still had its Chicken Tax-dodgin’ jump seats.

Yes, the personal-injury lawyers loved these seats, but they let Subaru evade the 25% tariff on imported light trucks.

Remember AOL CD spam? This car still has one!

It’s somewhat rusty (I know, Midwesterners, you don’t consider this to be true rust), but could have been kept on the road a while longer.

Corn stopped by.

The condition of the seats and the AOL disc suggest lengthy outdoor storage of a nondriving vehicle.









Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • MrFixit1599 MrFixit1599 on Nov 12, 2014

    I still want my '84 BRAT back. 4WD, check. 5 speed manual, check. T-tops, check. Missing the jump seats, but it had the oddball topper on the back that I immediately removed, which is probably worth some money to someone today. Rust took it's toll. Last I knew, BRAT was the most searched vehicle on EBAY, with the fewest results.

    • -Nate -Nate on Nov 13, 2014

      Who knew ? . Sadly , the So. Cal. Junk Yards used to be chock full of neat old vehicles just needing Mechanical refurbishment , no one wanted them when they were 10 ~ 20 years old . Now it's Toyota Tercel 4X4 Wagons I see , as a Yankee Farm Boy this seems wasteful but what do I know ? . -Nate

  • Olydoug Olydoug on Nov 13, 2014

    There's one up the street that was just tagged by the city. Been there at the curb with a flat tire for several weeks. Same color but without the jump seats.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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