How Subaru beat tariffs with backward seats in a pickup

“In response to punishing tariffs, Subaru has decided to place a pair of plastic seats in the open bed of its small pickup truck.” That’s the lead paragraph of a story at Driving—or rather, it would be, if this was 1978 and our editors were still wearing bell-bottoms and you could somehow print out this website onto wood-pulp or something.

What are we on about? The news cycle, and conversation around just about every dinner table, has lately been consumed with the talk of The Tariffs: what they mean, how they could affect the economy, and what the darn things could do to availability of yer favourite car. For now, the Trump administration has put the works on hold for a month, after which time there will surely be a fresh round of demands and attempts at bullying.

But tariffs against the automotive industry, and creative ways around them, have been present longer than most people toiling at this outlet have been alive. Back in the mid-‘60s, President Lyndon B. Johnson slapped a 25% tax on imported products ranging from potato starch to brandy. While those items eventually had their tariff lifted, one piece of merchandise included in the decree (namely, light trucks) was left on the books, and has been there ever since.

This partially explains why just about every single pickup with an open cargo bed sold on this side of the pond is assembled on this continent.

In the late ‘70s, Subaru wanted to import its small unibody pickup truck, a two-door unit called the Brat. Actually, it’s technically “BRAT,” an acronym for “Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter.” Seriously.

Whatever amount of capitalization one places on the vehicle, there was no getting around the fact this was a pickup truck assembled outside of North America, and therefore subject to tariffs—that is, until some enterprising individual inside Subaru realized that if a pair of jump seats were bolted into the open cargo area, it would technically be a passenger car, a style of machine subject to a far less punitive 2.5% tariff.

The ruse was clear – but it worked. Until the 1986 model year, after which the model was redesigned and dropped from the North American market, the Subaru Brat was equipped with a pair of rear-facing seats, complete with plastic grab handles and “safety” belts. We put quotes around that word since there was nothing safe at all about this setup, particularly since the ride height of these things effectively meant the passenger’s heads served as a roll bar if the truck went bottom-up in a crash.

These days, finding a Subaru Brat isn’t easy, let alone one with its original jump seats still in place. The ones which haven’t returned to the Earth in the form of fine iron oxide filings are prized today. A low-mile first-year example sold on Bring a Trailer several years ago for over USD$45,000. And, yes—it had the seats.

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