Make A Subaru Brat Your Summer Project

It’s the middle of a heatwave here in New York, which means that instead of wrenching on my bike I’m sitting in my air-conditioned bedroom browsing for other vehicles I could, theoretically, wrench on when it’s not nearly 100 degrees out. Given that we have a while before the mercury drops, though, maybe you should buy this 1979 Subaru Brat out from under me — you’ll probably start working on it before I can, and that means this beautiful little ute will be back in prime condition as soon as possible. 

If you’ve been looking for a summer project, this is it. A running, driving, perfectly-colored Subaru Brat! It almost doesn’t sound like a project at all, until you look a little closer and spot the rust bubbling through the paint. Unfortunately, that’s only the start of the liquid damage, but that’s the whole point of the project — if it were an absolutely perfect Brat, you wouldn’t have much to wrench on. It’d also certainly cost you more than $4,900. 

This Brat not only has rusted floors, but an interior that got a rainstorm’s worth of water inside. The seller talks about this in terms of enabling rust, from wet carpets, but there’s also genuine concern about whether the interior is full of mold — you may need to tear out some soft bits, bring it back down to metal, and rebuild from there. But, for a summer project, that’s the kind of work that keeps you out of the sun and keeps your back off the hot asphalt. Better that than swapping a transmission, right? 

Okay, the transmission does also need work. It leaks onto the exhaust — or onto a piece of metal rigged up specifically to stop the leak from hitting the exhaust — and will need some love. For under $5,000, though, much of this Brat seems solid, and it comes with plenty of parts to fix what isn’t. If you want to spend your summer evenings after work out in the garage, getting a beautiful old car back together, you could do a lot worse than this old Subaru ute. Just, please don’t repaint the wheels.