We’ll start with a correction: officially, the car you are looking at is a Subaru Brumby. The difference between a Brumby and the Subaru BRAT? None, whatsoever, outside of the placement of the steering wheel and those little plastic jump seats. Oddly enough, the BRAT was designed directly for the North American market, not the Japanese or Australasia group…with Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Chevrolet and Ford quickly jumping onto the tiny truck trend, Subaru’s North American president decided that hacking the back off of a Leone wagon and converting it to a ute would be the right way to go. And, as history has shown, it was. The BRAT was small and useful, light and efficient. “Powerful”, on the other hand, is inappropriate. Neither the 1.6L or 1.8L flat-fours really had any guts. We’re talking under 100 horsepower vehicles here.

This Brumby packs an EJ-25 flat-four, the kind you’d find in most late-model basic Scoobys like the Forester and the Legacy, boosted to the moon, working a Powerglide and running in the realm most Subarus never see. Seven second quarter-mile times out of a Subaru ute? Even an STI Impreza would have a difficult time trying to best that without radical modifications…this Brumby looks like it’d be street-legal in the States with just street tires!